Level one headings mark the beginning of each of the 11 chapters in this book.
Level 2 headings mark subsections within the chapters, and also the introductory items such as the “Contents” and “Preface” at the beginning of the book.
Foreword vi
Sources and Acknowledgments x
Introduction xiii
1. Historicity of the Bible 1
2. Archaeology and Our Religion 21
3. Myths and the Scriptures 37
4. Before Adam 49
5. Patriarchy and Matriarchy 87
6. Unrolling the Scrolls, Some Forgotten Witnesses 115
7. Treasures in the Heavens 171
8. Great Are the Words of Isaiah 215
9. More Voices from the Dust 239
10. The Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Questions and Answers 245
11. Qumran and the Companions of the Cave: The Haunted Wilderness 253
Notes
Sources
This volume is the first in a series, the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley.
The series will gather together all of Hugh Nibley's published books and
articles, as well as many other previously unpublished papers and transcribed
talks.
Hugh Nibley has had a prolific presence in the Latter-day Saint academy
and community over the last forty years. During that time, he has stirred many
minds and touched many hearts. His work, which this series memorializes, sets
many stages upon which the drama of Mormon thought over the coming generations
will undoubtedly be played out.
But as Hugh Nibley himself would be quick to point out, the collection of
his written works into one place by no means implies that his work or this
work is complete. Some of the materials appearing in this series are obviously
still in somewhat rough form. Minor editorial changes have been made by the
editors and by Dr. Nibley, but the informal or exploratory character of many
of these pieces has been preserved. The Nibley style is, in the final
analysis, indelible. Beyond that, all the footnotes have been rechecked for
accuracy and have been modified where necessary to make them complete and
consistent.
For Hugh Nibley's seventy-fifth birthday in March 1985, the following
tribute was prepared. With slight modification, it usefully serves to
introduce Hugh Nibley, the man behind these texts, to the readers of this
series. That tribute, entitled "A Doorkeeper in the House of the Lord," reads
as follows:
The last person in the world who is interested in celebrating Hugh
Nibley's seventy-fifth birthday [or in seeing the publication of the Collected
Works of Hugh Nibley, for that matter] is Hugh Nibley. He has never asked for
such a thing; he avoids recognition like the plague. In complete candor, he
faithfully describes himself as follows:
"I have always been furiously active in the Church, but I have also been
a nonconformist and have never held any office of rank in anything. I have
undertaken many assignments given me by the leaders, and much of the work has
been anonymous: no rank, no recognition, no anything. While I have been
commended for some things, they were never the things which I considered most
important. That was entirely a little understanding between me and my Heavenly
Father which I have thoroughly enjoyed, though no one else knows anything
about it. . . . I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord than
mingle with the top brass in the tents of the wicked."
Many similar words come to mind as others try to describe Hugh Nibley.
His life is a rare combination of faith and scholarship, of teaching and
research, of orthodoxy and eccentricity, of rigor and homily, of spontaneity
and tedium, of anonymity and legend, of an intimidating genius with a genuine
humility. "Who is this Nibley?" many visiting scholars have asked.
He is sincerely comfortable thinking of himself as a doorkeeper in the
House of the Lord. He loves the temple and the gatherings of the Saints and
would rather be there than anywhere else. His scholarly and religious
endeavors over the past four decades have posted him at important portals
through which Mormon generations will pass for years to come. His prolific
writings have distilled the comings and goings of millennia of human traffic.
With a watchman's panoramic vision, he sees the span of social and
intellectual developments from Enoch and Abraham, to Peter and Paul, to Joseph
and Brigham. He paces the halls of human knowledge, sometimes charting the
territory with great detail, at other times simply unlocking doors that lead
down passageways that others will be exploring for years to come.
Hugh Nibley was born March 27, 1910, in Portland, Oregon. He was
perceptive and preceptive from the beginning. His experiences in the natural
environment of pristine Oregon awakened in him an enduring sensitivity to
mankind's stewardship over the earth. Memorizing much of Shakespeare led him
inexorably to the study of Old English, then Latin, then Greek, then Arabic,
and on and on. For Hugh Nibley, one profound thing has always led to another.
After serving a mission in Germany and carrying out a special assignment
in Greece, he completed his A.B. in history at UCLA, graduating summa cum
laude in 1934. Although he was born in wealth, the family fortune evaporated
in the Great Depression, leaving Hugh to struggle for books and graduate
school tuition. He was a university fellow at the University of California at
Berkeley (1936-37), where he earned his doctorate in 1938, studying with such
luminaries as the great Semitist William Popper. His dissertation, entitled
The Roman Games as the Survival of an Archaic Year-Cult, was composed in three
weeks.
Following an appointment as lecturer in social philosophy at the
Claremont Colleges in Pomona, California, and after several intense years of
service as an army intelligence noncommissioned officer in World War II, he
dedicated his promising academic career to service of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. At the behest of John A. Widtsoe, Hugh Nibley
joined the history faculty at Brigham Young University in 1946, leaving, as
Robert Thomas has put it, the "glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was
Rome for the modesty that was Provo."
He and his wife, Phyllis, became the goodly parents of eight fine
children. Their home has been a haven. Its doors have always been open to
numerous students and family friends. Their family life has been filled with
music, lively discussions about drama and literature, archaeological
excursions, the arts and sciences.
He was promoted to the rank of professor of history and religion in 1953.
His academic career has been punctuated with a visiting professorship at
Berkeley (1959-60), where he lectured on ancient rhetoric and studied Coptic;
with a trip to Jordan in 1964, where he examined the Dead Sea Scrolls; and
with advanced studies in Egyptian at the Oriental Institute in Chicago in
1966.
His publications over the past forty years cover a wide range of topics,
including ancient history, politics, classics, education, science, Egyptology,
early Israel, the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Christian origins, the Book of
Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, temples and temple worship, Church history,
and society and the gospel. Though he considers it spiritually irrelevant,
most of his nearly two hundred titles are classics. A good synopsis of his
academic interests can be gleaned by scanning a few of those titles: For
example, No Ma`am That's Not History (1946); "The Arrow, the Hunter and the
State" (1949); Lehi in the Desert and the World of the Jaredites (1952); The
World and the Prophets (1954); An Approach to the Book of Mormon (1957);
"Christian Envy of the Temple" (1959-60); "How to Write an Anti-Mormon Book"
(1962); "The Expanding Gospel" (1965); Since Cumorah (1970); "Brigham Young on
the Environment" (1972); "What is Zion?" (1972); "Beyond Politics" (1974); The
Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (1975); "The Early
Christian Prayer Circle" (1978); "Patriarchy and Matriarchy" (1980); Abraham
in Egypt (1981); and "Work We Must, but the Lunch Is Free" (1983). All the
while, he has carried on voluminous correspondence, magnified his distinctive
calling in life as Church teacher and speaker, and been a major contributor to
Church magazines over the years~often on short notice and under considerable
pressure from publication deadlines.
His works are characterized by several unmistakable traits. He harbors an
urgent sense of placing immediate priority on eternal values. He knows that
the door is about to close, that time is running out, that money is not worth
it, that the extreme situations involving total extermination of nations in
the Book of Mormon are relevant for our day, and for him all these
realizations trivialize many pedantic projects and issues. He is relentless in
his examination of documents and in providing abundant documentation. His
curiosity is inexhaustible. He still feeds his memory a steady diet of
vocabulary cards. Discoveries constantly amaze him. His writings often draw
parallels or offer new characterizations that others have failed to perceive.
His interests are usually ahead of their time. He incisively exposes the
shortcomings of scientific absolutism and the fundamental flaws of both gospel
detractors and zealots. His works are typically bold and daring, challenging
but reassuring, resourceful and creative, innovative if not revolutionary,
sensitive and insightful.
Still, he does not take himself at all seriously. Repenting and giving
thanks are the things he thinks he does best. He sees his learning as forever
tentative, incomplete, and accumulating. Once discovered, his innovative
insights are so painfully obvious that it is hard for him to see why he had
not noticed them before. He willingly describes himself as a buffoon and, from
time to time, as a frustrated fiction writer, waiting for the real scholarship
to begin.
As a university community and as a people, we owe an immeasurable debt to
Hugh Nibley for his unique contributions to our lives. His work has changed us
all. Few students can talk coherently about their first class from Hugh
Nibley. For many it has been viewed as a necessary rite of passage, while for
others it was an electrifying baptism in the waters of ideas and ideals. Hugh
Nibley's manner of speech, tempered hyperbole, instills an extraordinary sense
of vitality. His unfailing encouragement to students to satisfy their own
curiosity, not his, is the kind of faith that has moved many inert cerebral
mountains.
In a word, Hugh Nibley is no ordinary doorman. But then, as far as that
goes, he doesn't stand by ordinary doorways either.
Of that, readers of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley may see for
themselves.
JOHN W. WELCH
"Historicity of the Bible" is the edited transcript of an address given
to the Seminary and Institute faculty at Brigham Young University on June
19,1956.
"Archaeology and Our Religion," accompanied by two cover letters dated
September 16, 1965, was originally intended to be included in the "I Believe"
series in the Instructor. On January 18, 1982, it appeared in the Seventh East
Press, pp. 4-7,12.
"Myths and the Scriptures" was published in the October 1971 New Era, pp.
34-38.
"Before Adam" is the edited text of an address given to the BYU community
on April 1, 1980.
"Patriarchy and Matriarchy" was first delivered on February 1, 1980, to
the annual women's conference at Brigham Young University. It was subsequently
published in the proceedings of that conference, Blueprints for Living:
Perspectives for Latter-day Saint Women (Provo: Brigham Young University
Press, 1980), pp. 44-61.
"Unrolling the Scrolls, Some Forgotten Witnesses," a talk given in
Glendale, California, in 1967, has been transcribed and edited from a tape
recording.
"Treasures in the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the
Organizing of Worlds" was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8
(Autumn/Winter 1973): 76-98, and reprinted in Nibley On the Timely and the
Timeless (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), pp. 49-84.
"Great are the Words of Isaiah" is an address given at BYU's sixth annual
Sidney B. Sperry Symposium on January 28,1978. It subsequently appeared in the
proceedings of that symposium, pp. 193-207, published by Brigham Young
University Press in 1978.
"More Voices from the Dust" appeared in the Instructor (March 1956), pp.
71-72,74.
"The Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Questions and Answers" was originally an
address given to the Seminary and Institute faculty at BYU on July 5,1962. It
then appeared in the Instructor 98 (July 1963): 233-35.
"Qumran and The Companions of the Cave" first appeared in Revue de Qumran
5 (April 1965): 177-98. It was reprinted in Nibley On the Timely and the
Timeless (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), pp. 187-212.
This volume gathers together eleven Hugh Nibley articles and talks that
deal essentially with the Old Testament or topics related to it. The first
four papers address several problems raised by opponents of the Bible. These
are mainly claims of one kind or another against the historicity of the
creation account and early narratives in Genesis. Answers are given to the
skeptical views of existentialist theologians, textual critics, overconfident
scientists and archaeologists, demythologizing historians, and evolutionists.
Guiding principles are articulated through the eyes of faith, through the
unifying threads of culture and ritual, and through the miraculous and
insightful perspectives of revealed scripture found in the Book of Mormon and
the Book of Abraham.
The next three papers are related to the study of the biblical creation
account. First is a discussion of the roles of men and women in the world,
followed by two papers on the composite picture of the creation of the world
as seen from numerous apocryphal and pseudepigraphic texts, as well as
passages from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi library, and early
Christian materials. The assumption here, only thinly veiled, is that ritual
threads connect this world view with the meaning of the Latter-day Saint
temple ceremony.
After the paper on Isaiah, which discusses the human qualities Isaiah
finds most pleasing to God, the final three papers report discoveries relative
to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Two articles are early announcements of the potential
significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls for Book of Mormon studies, a theme
explored further by Hugh Nibley in a series of articles in the Improvement Era
that soon thereafter appeared in his book Since Cumorah, first published in
1967. The final article raises issues about possible connections between the
Dead Sea Scrolls and certain later Arabic texts, showing an intriguing
persistence and pervasiveness of the traditions known at Qumran.
As editors, we caution that this volume is neither exhaustive nor
independent. Subsequent volumes in this collection will also contain materials
relevant to Old Testament studies, for many other Hugh Nibley writings deal in
one way or another with the Old Testament. There is, one will quickly find, a
high degree of interrelatedness in much of what Hugh Nibley has written. This
makes it somewhat artificial, if not impossible, to carve up the works of Hugh
Nibley into distinct topical compartments. His works on Enoch and Abraham, for
example, do not appear in this volume; they will be published in separate
subsequent volumes. Those two figures belong as much to the Pearl of Great
Price as to the Old Testament. Our main goal as editors has been to organize
these materials along the lines of those gospel themes and scriptural
connections that themselves have been the fixed beacons along Hugh Nibley's
research paths. We hope that our design adds coherence and comprehension to
this collection.
The problem of the historicity of the Bible is exactly the same today as
it has been since the days of the first apologists. One reads the Bible and
decides for himself what is history in it and what is allegory, and what is
myth, and what is legend, and what is interpolation.
There are two main schools of thought on the subject. There are the
fundamentalists, who believe that everything put forth in the Bible as history
actually happened as they find it stated; and there are the liberals, who
about the year 1925 (according to the study of Eduard Konig) reached the
general consensus that the historical value of the Bible is nil. The LDS
people have always stood between these two extremes.
Thirty years ago there was such a solid consensus of learned opinion
about the real nature of the Bible and the ancient Hebrew and Christian
religions in both camps, both fundamentalist and liberal, that a student
needed only to consult any handbook to put him in harmony with the "scholars"
on all major issues. That is no longer the case: today all is doubt and
confusion.
The principal cause of this confusion has been what one scholar calls
"the breakthrough of the eschatological interpretation," which he compares to
a strategic military breakthrough that throws a whole army into panic and
disorder.
Before we describe the breakthrough, it is important to know what
eschatology is. The eschatological viewpoint is that which sees and judges
everything in terms of a great eternal plan. Whether we like it or not, we
belong to the eternities; we cannot escape the universe. All our thoughts and
deeds must be viewed against an infinite background and against no other.
Eschatos means "ultimate" and refers to that which lies beyond all local and
limited goals and interests. Limited objectives are commendable in their way,
but only as contributing to something eternal. Extreme as this doctrine may
seem, the only alternative, as the philosophers of old repeatedly observed, is
a trip to nowhere, a few seconds of pleasure in an hour of pain, and after
that only "the depth of emptiness." But the eschatological view of life is
more than a philosophy; it is a specific religious tradition, teaching that
there actually was a great plan agreed upon at the foundation of the world,
and that all that has transpired on earth since the beginning or shall take
place hereafter is to be understood as showing forth the operation or
attempted frustration of that plan. (An interesting corollary to that is that
all things are party to this plan, so that when man sins he puts himself at
cross-purposes with all nature, which becomes his enemy and crosses and checks
him with all kinds of diseases and allergies. These are simply forms of
frustration that the rabbis believe resulted from the fact that we are trying
to go one way while the universe insists on going another way. We do not
belong anymore.) Everything is in terms of this plan.
This "eschatological breakthrough" was the realization, climaxing a
generation of cumulative study and discovery, that the eschatological view of
man's life on earth, though highly distasteful to the doctors and teachers of
conventional Christianity and Judaism, was nonetheless the very heart of the
original Christian faith and was firmly held by important groups of Jews in
ancient times. Accordingly, "since the breakthrough of the eschatological
interpretations of the concept of the Kingdom of God in the preaching of
Jesus, the question of the content and meaning of Jesus' message has never
been satisfactorily settled." Conventional and long-established views of the
nature of the Christian religion, whether liberal or fundamentalist, are so
completely out of line with the new discoveries that there is now afoot an
extremely widespread movement to put the whole Christian faith on a new
"existentialist" footing that will ignore history altogether. An eminent
Christian scholar, S. G. F. Brandon, commenting on this movement, observes,
"It is eloquent witness to the increasing embarrassment felt by Christian
thinkers about the assumed historicity of their faith. Such a suggestion of
embarrassment in this connection may possibly cause surprise and provoke an
instant denial that such a situation exists in any significant academic
circle. However, the historical character of Christianity, which was once
proclaimed apologetically as the greatest argument for the validity of that
faith, has gradually been found to be a source of great perplexity if not of
weakness." Until now according to this authority, Christian scholars have
willingly accepted "the claim that, if Christianity derives its authority from
certain events which took place at a specific place and time, then that claim
must be investigated by the most austere standards of historical judgment. For
many decades under the aegis of the liberal tradition of scholarship, this
task was undertaken with fervent conviction, and great was the knowledge
amassed by such methods of research about Primitive Christianity. But in time
this process of investigation into Christian origins has gradually revealed
itself to be a journey ever deeper into a morass of conjecture about the
imponderables which lie behind or beyond the extant literary documents."
Note there that what is found wanting is not the Bible, but man's
interpretations of it, the root of the trouble being that they simply do not
have enough evidence to go one way or the other.
If this is true today, it was even truer thirty, forty, or fifty years
ago, but the scholars did not know. On both sides they felt convinced that
they had the final answer. (The Swede, Olaf Linton, wrote a very good
dissertation on that.) They could both speak with perfect confidence because
of what I call the gas law of learning, namely, that any amount of information
no matter how small will fill any intellectual void no matter how large. A
simple and natural misunderstanding lies at the root of almost any biblical
study you can find from around 1900: that was the belief that since the New
Testament is, after all, the whole of our evidence on such things as the life
of Christ and the Apostolic Church, it must necessarily tell the whole story.
This theory that we know all there is to know is a very flattering one, but
during the last twenty years it has been subject to a series of fatal blows.
In the business of scholarship, evidence is far more flexible than
opinion. The prevailing view of the past is controlled not by evidence but by
opinion. The scholars, like the fundamentalists, have believed what they
wanted to believe. The liberals have in the past been more willing than their
rivals to change their opinions in the face of overwhelming evidence. But now
things have come to an impasse with them; they are in open revolt against
history. The findings of the last two decades have been of supreme
significance, but they have not confirmed the preconceptions of the liberals,
who now propose simply to ignore them. The existentialism of Bultmann, Barth,
and the Roman Catholic Marcel as a champion of Thomistic theology, is, says
Brandon, "a truly vehement repudiation" of history. They say we must reject
all historical study of Christianity as "negating its present relevance by
demonstrating its relevance to the environment in which it took its origin."
What is relevant to life and conditions of one age cannot possibly be relevant
to another (the Book of Mormon clearly and fully disproves this thesis, which
is based on Spengler's Unwiederkehrlichkeit); if a thing happens once it can
never happen again. Here we have as the very essence of the apocalyptic
pattern of history the doctrine that things happen in cycles and recur. Both
Harnack and Schweitzer laid great emphasis on the claim that virtually nothing
is or can be known about a historical Jesus. This freed them to work out a
kind of a Jesus that pleased them. "We are thankful," wrote Schweitzer, "that
we have handed down to us only gospels, not biographies of Jesus." When new
discoveries come out, they receive, to say the least, a very cold reception.
If the real Jesus walked in on them, they would invite him to leave. They have
the Jesus they want, and they do not want more. The scholars made their own
Jesus: Kierkegaard and Dilthey decided that if we must take history we can at
least make it into a thing expressive of our own experience; this led to the
existentialism of today, in which the individual rejects as myth anything he
does not feel inclined to accept. It is the negation of the open mind.
Bultmann writes: "It is impossible to make use of electric light and radio,
and, in case of illness, to claim the help of modern medical and clinical
methods and at the same time believe in the New Testament's spirits and
miracles." On the other hand, I have heard General Authorities cite the
electric light and radio as proof of the possibility of miracles. Bultmann's
statement is simply untrue, but it is very significant as demonstrating how
scholars control evidence instead of being controlled by it. The case of the
radio can be taken as equally convincing evidence for or against miracles,
depending on how one wants to take it. Bultmann sees in it only evidence
against miracles, it apparently never occurs to him that it might provide an
argument for the other side. He believes what he wants to, and frankly admits
it when he tells us, if history does not suit our theory of religion, to throw
out the history.
In all this, it is not the weakness of the scriptures but the willfulness
of men that is exposed. It has taken a hundred years of guessing and
counterguessing to convince the learned that they were not solving the problem
of "the content and the meaning of Jesus' message"; the discovery, instead of
teaching them humility, has turned them bitterly against the scriptures, whose
historical claims Bultmann and his school now attack with "truly vehement
repudiation." The eminent Jewish scholar Torczyner tells us how the old
established ideas about the uniform nature of the Bible have had to be given
up: "This uniform picture of Biblical criticism has finally been forced to
shatter, after the first faint suspicions of certain individuals had gradually
grown up to the stature of the communis opinio. Scientific investigation has
disclosed the richness and variety of the Biblical literature . . . revealing
as it does both life and individuality, contradiction and differentness."
Torczyner's own reaction to this recognition of a fact familiar to all
Latter-day Saints since the founding of the Church has been to turn him
violently against the Bible as history, declaring it to be a "total
misconception, or even falsification, of the real state of things."
"It is a heavy loss," writes another Hebrew scholar, "that the old
historical works no longer survive intact and independent, but only as
worked-over materials inserted into the structure of a late compilation and
buried under the rubble of many re-editings. The only hope lies in textual
analysis, but in the end even that can give us no more than a lot of
fragments, whose connection with each other is largely damaged or totally
destroyed." Over one hundred years ago, the Prophet Joseph Smith shocked the
world by announcing that the very first verse of the Bible has been altered
and corrupted by "some old Jew without any authority." If he offended the
fundamentalists as much as the liberals, the new discoveries have been equally
damaging to both.
Out of this hopeless inadequacy of man's knowledge has grown what now
goes by the name of "the Modern Predicament," which is "that man seems to be
faced with an unbridgeable gulf between. . . knowledge and faith. . . Religion
was born in a world different from ours, a tiny, comfortable world. . . . That
ancient world has been nibbled away by science and the question arises whether
against a new and scientific background religion in any form will find it
possible to survive." It was just that "tiny, comfortable world" of
conventional Christianity that was so mortally offended by the coming forth of
latter-day prophecy; the mighty revelations of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine
and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price were an unpardonable affront to the
established barriers of time, place, and custom. The Christian world is now
for the first time learning how wrong it was, and the experience is not a
pleasant one. In all the journals, Catholic and Protestant, a cry of distress
goes up: "What is left to us," they ask, "if the things we have always been
taught are not so?"
It is hard to believe that men would search for "a religion without
faith," yet that is the title of a book designed to guide modern religious
thinking. The author begins with a quotation from David Strauss: "The
religious area of the human soul is like the region of the Redskins in
America, which is becoming inexorably smaller from year to year." This leads
to the question "What remains for the man who does not believe? What can we
salvage of religion and its benign influence for the confirmed agnostic who is
convinced that we can know nothing of another world?" Incidentally, since we
cannot prove a negative, being convinced of one is a pure act of faith. In
other words, how can we enjoy the fruits of faith without any faith at all?
"Modern humanity," says a contemporary theologian with a nod of approval, "is
for the most part of the same opinion as Pliny, . . . that belief in a rebirth
or life after death is simply a sop for children." Since Pliny was an ancient
dilettante and not a modern scientist, we cannot lay this state of mind to the
charge of science; in their ways of disbelief the clergy have led the field.
This can be seen in Marneck's final definition of a "religion without faith,"
for in the end he recommends "to the non-believing person access to religious
feelings through the substitution (Auslosung) of religious feelings by like
feelings of a non-religious nature." These "non-religious" feelings which are
accessible to the complete "non-believer" are found in social good-works,
aesthetic experience, brotherly love, the psychological search for the deeper
self, and the Ethical Gospel. But these are the very things that for many
years have made up the substance of religion as taught in liberal theological
seminaries everywhere: truly a "religion without faith." "Never before," says
a leading Egyptologist, viewing our times against a sweeping background of
world history, "was the human race . . . farther from the divine than it is
today. It has in this respect sunk to the lowest abyss."
It is not only in the field of religions but in all ancient studies that
preconceived ideas are being uprooted on all sides. The religious take it
harder than others because they are committed to a "party line", usually so
deeply committed that a major readjustment produces disillusionment and even
disaffection. Yet the discoveries that have proven so upsetting should have
been received not with hostility but joy, for if they have a way of shattering
the forms in which the labors of scholarship have molded the past, they bring
a new substance and reality to things that the learned of another age had
never thought possible. The same discoveries that to their dismay are rebuking
the favorite theories of the doctors are at the same time vindicating that
Bible world that they had consigned to the realm of myth. Years ago the
celebrated Niebuhr observed that ancient history is always treated "as if it
had never really happened"-it is a thesis, a demonstration, an intellectual
exercise, but not a real account of real people. "Ingrained in our
subconscious," says a recent study of ancient Egypt, "is a disbelief in the
actual existence of those times and persons, which haunts us through the
schools and in the theaters and libraries and impregnates the whole concept of
`Antiquity.'" In a word, artificiality is to this day the very substance of
ancient history.
From this mood of precious academic make-believe, the learned are now
rudely aroused to face another world entirely. We live in a time of the
reexamination and reevaluation of all ancient documents now extant. They are
being completely gone over from beginning to end. They are not as we thought
they were at all. This may seem a late date to ask, for example, "What is the
Book of Mormon?" It should seem far stranger to ask, "What is the Iliad?"
"What is the Apocrypha?" "What is the Book of the Dead?" or "What is the
Bible?" Yet those questions are being more seriously considered today than at
any other time. Up until the present, scholars have thought they had a pretty
good idea of what the historical, literary, philosophical, or religious
writings of the past were all about. Not so today! The whole question of
ancient records is now undergoing a thorough reinvestigation.
How this state of things has come about may best be illustrated by
considering the case of the famous Eduard Meyer. In 1884 the first volume of
his great History of the Ancient World (Geschichte des Altertums) appeared,
presenting to the world "for the first time a history of the Ancient East in a
scientifically satisfying form, a work which at the time produced a veritable
sensation." Before many years, however, the author was hard at work revising
the whole thing, for the history of the ancient world must be constantly
rewritten. By considering a few of the things that happened between Meyer's
two editions of his own work, one may gain some idea of the tempo of discovery
in our times. As Walter Otto summarizes the developments:
The History of the Ancient East had taken on a totally different
aspect. . . . Times and areas which formerly had been almost or
completely unknown were brought to light; we have become acquainted with
completely new languages and learned to use them as sources; peoples
known formerly only by name now stand before us as concrete realities;
the Indo-germanic element, which serious scholarship had long concluded
was of no significance for the Ancient East, . . . now shows more clearly
every day as an important historical element even in the more ancient
periods; empires, such as the Mitanni and especially the Hittite, of
whose history and structure not long ago only a few scattered details
were known, have recently emerged as worthy rivals of the great
traditional empires of the east, who actually recognized the Hittites as
their equal.
In the two decades since those words were written, things have gone
faster than ever. To mention only a few of the developments, there is afoot
today a general reevaluation of the oldest Egyptian texts and a far-reaching
reinterpretation of the very essentials of Egyptian religion; the origin and
background of Sumero-Babylonian civilization is being reconsidered completely
in the light of excavations made along the periphery of that area and of epic
texts whose real significance has just begun to dawn on the experts; the
unearthing of the oldest known villages gives us a new and unexpected picture
of a civilization that "seems to have come into being with relative (even
revolutionary) suddenness," instead of with that evolutionary gradualness with
which all such things were once supposed to have happened; the involvement of
the Hebrew Patriarchs, especially Abraham, with our own Indo-European
relatives has called for a wholly new picture of Old Testament times and
peoples; the application of new methods of dating has cut down the
conventional time scale, especially for the earlier periods (for example, as
at Jericho) abruptly and drastically; the discovery of a new date for
Hammurabi has called for a thoroughgoing revamping of ancient chronology; "the
Hurrians have emerged from total obscurity and have come to occupy a stellar
role. . . . A new planet has appeared on the historical horizon and an area
that was formerly dark has been flooded with a new and strange light." Within
the last five years with the discovery of a single inscription a whole world
of Greek myth and legend has been transmuted into the category of
flesh-and-blood reality; within the same short period the decipherment of the
Minoan Script B has with a single sweep rubbed out two hundred years of
laborious speculation and acid controversy on major aspects of the Homeric
problem, and shown us the Greeks writing good Greek a thousand years before
anyone had credited them with literacy; at the same time the mystery of
Etruscan has been solved, and the true nature of the mysterious Runic writing
of our Norse ancestors explained; today nearly all scholars accept the
original identity of the Hamitic, Semitic, and Indo-European languages, a
thing that the less informed and more opinionated gentlemen of a few years ago
laughed to scorn as a fundamentalist pipe-dream.
In all this fever and ferment of discovery and reevaluation, no documents
have been more conspicuously involved than those relating to Israel's past and
that of the earliest Christian church. Since World War lI the greatest
discoveries ever made in these fields have come to light. In the great days of
"scientific" scholarship, when the only safe and respectable position for any
man of stature to take was to give a flat "no" to any suggestion that the
Bible might contain real history, not the least sensational of Eduard Meyer's
many ingenious pronouncements was the startling declaration that the Old
Testament was not only history but very good history, by far the most
accurate, reliable, and complete history ever produced by an ancient people,
with the possible exception of the Greeks, who came much, much later. Time and
research have strikingly vindicated this claim.
Eduard Konig treats the subject in a study that deserves to be summarized
here. He tells how all the scholars brushed aside the account in Genesis 23
of Abraham's dealings with the Hittites as a fabrication or a mistake- until
the Amarna discoveries proved that the Bible was right and they were wrong.
The account of Judah's seal- ring in Genesis 38:18 was treated as a clumsy
anachronism until about 1913, when the use of seals in early Palestine was
proven by excavation. The favorite creed that the early history of Israel
rested entirely on oral tradition was blasted by discoveries proving
widespread literacy in the earliest days of Israel. The universal belief that
Israel had no interest in real history is disproven by the care with which
memorial stones, trees, and so on were designated, and by the fullness and
detail of early accounts. It was taken for granted that the early histories of
Israel did not reflect the ancient times they purported to describe, but
depicted actually the much later periods in which they were written; yet
archaeological, ethnological, and philological findings in and around Israel
show that these texts do not depict the Aramaic times but give an authentic
picture of a much earlier world. Naturally it was assumed that the early
historians of Israel knew nothing about the correct use of sources and
evidence; yet they are careful to cite their sources (often now lost), have
keen eyes for historical changes, and often include comments and sidelights
from various related sources. The prevailing conviction that Israelite history
was a "harmonizing and rationalizing" piece of free composition is disproven
by the very scholars who make the charge when they claim they are able to
detect a great variety of styles and levels of composition-in other words,
that the texts have not been harmonized. The very common claim that the
history of Israel was all painted over and prettied up so as to quite conceal
the original, runs contrary to the many unsavory and uncomplimentary things
said about Israel and her founders throughout these writings; the weaknesses
of Israel's heroes are not concealed, as such things are in other ancient
histories, and the actions of the nation are certainly not "bathed in a golden
light," as the scholars claimed.
It is hard now to realize that as recently as 1908 Eduard Meyer could
announce to the Berlin academy: "Twenty- five years ago there existed not a
single historical document" to confirm the early history of Israel as given in
the Bible. It was quite suddenly in the late 1800s that such documents began
to appear, and then it was like the coming of our spring floods, with the
great collections of stuff, no mere trickle, pouring out year after year in a
breathtaking sequence that appears not yet to have reached its crest.
The present decade has seen epoch-making departures in the direction of
new and daring comparative studies. Enough documentary material is now
available to justify bold attempts at generalization that would have been out
of the question less than a generation ago. As late as 1930 a leading
Egyptologist, T. E. Peet, while marveling at the amazing parallels between
them, could stoutly affirm that the literatures of the Egyptians, Babylonians,
Hebrews, and Greeks were each the result of separate and independent
evolutions, and even as he was writing the Ras Shamra, records were being
unearthed to establish beyond a doubt the interdependence of these
"independent" cultures. The ancient world is now all one. It was a favorite
thesis of Eduard Meyer that Greece and Israel produced parallel historical
literature in complete ignorance of each other. What would he say today to
serious studies of such themes as "Homeric Epics in the Ancient East" or
"Linguistic Relationships between the Ancient Orient and the British Isles"?
These are no mere crackpot aberrations.
The greatest linguist of our day (Hrozny) could write not long ago:
"Accepted today beyond all possible doubt is the close affinity of the Hamitic
with the Semitic races and languages. . . and of the Indoeuropean with them!"
and go on to explain this phenomenon in terms exactly corresponding to those
of the Tower of Babel story. Yet such a thesis is far less radical than those
that now emphasize the extreme suddenness of the emergence of languages, whole
linguistic families appearing full-fledged and completely made within a
decade! The vast range of these comparative studies, most of which, of course,
are still highly conjectural, we cannot examine here. We bring them up only to
show what is going on and to make it clear that the picture of man's life and
thought and action in the past is by no means the one we were taught to accept
in our childhood.
It is especially important to note that the easy, lazy, flattering
evolutionary bias that once solved all questions of the past from an armchair,
by a simple rule of thumb, simply won't work any longer. This can be
illustrated by the effect of the Ugaritic texts of Ras Shamra, texts that
showed Professor Peet to be wrong in attributing the growth of Hebrew
literature to an evolutionary process, leading the great orientalist A. H.
Sayce to confess that his own conception of the primitive beginnings of the
record was a mistaken one: "There is no longer any difficulty," he wrote, "in
believing that there were abundant literary documents for compiling the
earlier books of the Old Testament. . . . Consequently there is no longer any
need of our believing as I formerly did that cuneiform tablets lie behind the
text of the earlier Biblical books. . . . In the Mosaic period the Oriental
world was as well stocked with books and what we would call public libraries
as it was in the Greek epoch." Using the same texts, Dr. Gordon has concluded
that the fundamental criteria of the higher critics in their reconstruction of
a hypothetical evolution of the Old Testament text are not binding: "It is
against the background of Ugaritic that we must evaluate the multiplicity of
God's name. . . . Elohim and Yahwe need not imply dual authorship in a chapter
of the Bible any more than Baal and Hadd do in a Ugaritic myth." No less
questionable than the names of God as a key to the structure of the Bible are
variations in style, heretofore believed to indicate with perfect certainty
changes of authorship within the various books: "The rediscovery of the lost
literature of the Bible world shows us that most biblical books could be
accepted in Israel as single compositions. . . . The magnificent structure of
the Old Testament higher criticism is not to be brushed aside; but its
individual results can no longer be accepted unless they square with the
Hebrew text as we can now understand it in the light of parallel literatures
from the pagan forerunners and contemporaries of the Hebrews, in Bible
lands."
Haldar, studying priestly and prophetic institutions, reaches a similar
conclusion regarding accepted principles of the higher criticism: "It follows
that the evolutionary view of the Old Testament prophets cannot be accepted;
instead. . . heavy stress must be laid on continuity." "The greatly increased
knowledge of the world surrounding Israel in the ancient Orient" shows,
according to Mowinckel, "that the `sources' of the Old Testament at any rate
might be much more ancient than those held by the prevailing evolutionary view
of literary criticism."
The major shift in orientation in Bible study from the old literary to
what Mowinckel calls the "traditio-historical method" has been the result of a
growing necessity of seeing the Bible in a much broader setting than it has
heretofore been placed in. As Gordon said, the results of Bible criticism "can
no longer be accepted unless they square with the rediscovered `lost
literatures of the Bible World.'" The Bible World is no longer the world made
by the Bible, but the much wider world in which the Bible finds itself along
with other books, sacred and profane. Today, we are told, "the Old Testament
horizon must be expanded and its history interpreted against this larger
background. Here, indeed, we must learn to hold converse with the whole
universe." "The Bible strikes root into every ancient Near Eastern culture,"
writes Albright, "and it cannot be historically understood until we see its
relationship to its sources in true perspective." The same may be said of any
other ancient text: all fields of study seem to be converging at present on
the single theme of the oneness of the ancient world. The interrelationships
between ancient writings are being drawn closer all the time; they are already
so close, in fact, that Haering can now proclaim that all ancient literature,
sacred and profane, Jew and Gentile, may be regarded and must be read as a
single great book!
A century and a quarter ago, a young man shocked and angered the world by
bringing out a large book that he set up beside the Bible not as a commentary
or a key to the scriptures, but as original scripture, the revealed word of
God to men of old-and as genuine history. The book itself declares that it is
an authentic product of the Near East; it gives a full and circumstantial
account of its own origin; it declares that it is but one of many, many such
books that have been produced in the course of history and may be hidden in
sundry places at this day; it places itself in about the middle of a long list
of sacred writings, beginning with the patriarchs and continuing down to the
end of human history; it cites now-lost prophetic writings of prime
importance, giving the names of their authors; it traces its own cultural
roots in all directions, emphasizing the immense breadth and complexity of
such connections in the world; it belongs to the same class of literature as
the Bible, but along with a sharper and clearer statement of biblical
teachings contains a formidable mass of historical material unknown to
biblical writers but well within the range of modern comparative study, since
it insists on deriving its whole cultural tradition, even in details, directly
from a specific time and place in the Old World.
The Book of Mormon is God's challenge to the world. It was given to the
world not as a sign to convert it but as a testimony to convict it. In every
dispensation the world must be left without excuse. It is given without
reservation or qualification as a true history and the word of God: "A record
of a fallen people, and the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the
Gentiles and to the Jews also." The bold claims of this book were meant to
invite comment and question. If the Book of Mormon is to be the guiding star
for a world that has lost its bearing, "proving to the world that the Holy
Scriptures are true" (D&C 20:11), it must stand firm and unmoved without any
external support. The Bible has been systematically dismantled by men who in
the end did not want to believe it. For a hundred years they have been
whittling away at it with dogged determination, and now they are all out to
"demythologize" and "deeschatologize" it for good. But the Book of Mormon
cannot be so dismantled, even by those most determined to reject it. It is a
single monolithic block, given to the world at one time and place. Unlike the
Bible, it cannot lead "into a morass of imponderables" due to the obscurity of
its sources, for it is not the product of centuries or generations of editing
and transmission. Unlike the Bible, it cannot be partly true, for the Book of
Mormon itself closes the door on such a proposition.
Throughout the Middle Ages wild reports circulated through Europe and
Asia from time to time that a letter had fallen from heaven. These reports
caused an immense sensation among Christians everywhere, and though they
always turned out to be false, the world never ceased hoping that someday a
letter or some other tangible thing from heaven would fall into the eager
hands of a yearning Christendom. We may smile and ask, "Is anything as crass
and tangible as a letter from heaven to be taken seriously by right-thinking
people? Must one hear voices and see visions or otherwise have experiences
unfamiliar to everyday experience? Are such things necessary?" Whether one
likes it or not, Christianity is a very literal-minded religion. The recent
attempt to "demythologize" it, that is, to treat as expendable everything in
it that smacks of the miraculous, supernatural, or literal has met with a
surprisingly vigorous storm of protest from ministers everywhere who, when
confronted with a flat "either-or" have been forced to admit that Christianity
with the miraculous, the apocalyptic, and the tangible elements removed would
not be Christian at all.
In the Book of Mormon, the world finally has, so to speak, its "letter
from heaven." Those other epistles were easily tested and found wanting;
though sometimes written and presented with considerable skill, they could not
fool for long even the unscientific and uncritical ages in which they came
forth. There is no reason why the Book of Mormon should not be subjected to
every possible test, textual, literary, and historical, for it pleads no
special immunity of any kind. It says in 2 Nephi: "Ye have closed your eyes,
and ye have rejected the prophets. . . . the Lord God shall bring forth unto
you the words of a book, and they shall be the words of them which have
slumbered. . . . The learned shall not read them, for they have rejected them,
and I am able to do mine own work. . . . For behold, I am God; and I am a God
of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday,
today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be
according to their faith. . . . For the wisdom of their wise and learned shall
perish, . . . the terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is
consumed. . . . they also that erred in spirit shall come to understanding,
and they that murmured shall learn doctrine." (2 Nephi 27:5-6,
20,23,26,31,35.)
In the Book of Mormon the very questions about the Bible that now oppress
the liberal and fundamentalist alike, to the imminent overthrow of their
fondest beliefs, are fully and clearly treated; no other book gives such a
perfect and exhaustive explanation of the eschatological problem; here we
learn how the Christian and Jewish traditions fit into the world picture, and
how God's voice has been from the very beginning to all men everywhere; here
alone one may find a full setting forth of the exact nature of scripture, and
of the vast range and variety of revelation; here you will find anticipated
and answered every logical objection that the intelligence or vanity of men
even in this sophisticated age has been able to devise against the preaching
of the word; and here one may find a description of our own age so vivid and
so accurate that none can fail to recognize it, all these things and much more
by way of "proving to the world that the holy scriptures are true." (D&C
20:11.)
So you see that when Joseph Smith brought forth the Book of Mormon, he
shocked and angered the world. You remember that within a week the
announcements started coming out in the papers: "the Book of Mormon,
Blasphemy," and so on. He shocked and angered the world by setting up beside
the Bible another book as original scripture.
I think we may see it come to pass that the Book of Mormon will prove to
the world that the scriptures are true. There are things in the Bible that are
historical and things that are not. The guide to follow is the Book of Mormon.
1. König, Eduard, "Ist die jetzt herrschende Einschatzung der
hebraischen Geschichtsquellen berechtigt?" Historische Zeitschrift 132 (1925):
289-302.
2. Brandon, Samuel George Frederick, "The Historical Element in
Primitive Christianity," Numen 2(1955): 156.
3. Brandon, p. 157.
4. Linton, Olaf, Das Problem der Urkirche in der neueren Forschung
(Uppsala: Almquist und Wiksell, 1932), n.p.
5. Brandon, p. 157.
6. Bultmann, Rudolf, "History and Eschatology in the New Testament, "
New Testament Studies 1 (1954): n.p.
7. Schweitzer, Albert, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung (Tûbingen:
J. C. B. Mohr, 1913), p. 2.
8. Bultmann.
9. Torczyner, Harry, "Das Literarische Problem der Bibel," Zeitschrift
der deutschen Morgenlândischen Geschichte 85(1913): 287-88.
10. Paton, Herbert James, The Modern Predicament (New York: Macmillan,
1955), p. 374.
11. Otto, Walter F., "Zur Universalgeschichte des Altertums," His to
rische Zeitschrift 146(1932): 205.
12. König, pp. 289-302.
13. Hrozny, Bedrick, Ancient History of Western Asia, India and Crete
(Prague: Artia, 1940), p. 52.
14. Sayce, Archibald Henry, Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies
(London: Religious Tract Society, 1910), n.p.
15. Gordon, Cyrus, îIgaritic Literature (Rome: Pontifical Institute of
the Bible, 1949), n.p.
16. Gordon.
17. Haldar, Alfred Ossian, Association of Cult Prophets among the
Ancient Semites (Uppsala: Almquist und Wiksell), p. 199.
18. Mowinckel, Sigmund, Religion und Kultus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1953), n.p.
19. Albright, William Foxwell, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1946), n.p.
"Historicity of the Bible" is the edited transcript of an address given to the
Seminary and Institute faculty at Brigham Young University on June 19,1956.
Nothing illustrates better than archaeology the inadequacy of human
knowledge at any given time. It is not that archaeology is less reliable than
other disciplines, but simply that its unreliability is more demonstrable.
Meteorology (to show what we mean) is quite as "scientific" as geology and far
more so than archaeology, it actually makes more use of scientific
instruments, computers, and higher mathematics than those disciplines need to.
Yet we laugh at the weatherman every other day; we are not overawed by his
impressive paraphernalia, because we can check up on him any time we feel like
it: he makes his learned pronouncements, and then it rains or it doesn't rain.
If we could check up on the geologist or archaeologist as easily when he tells
us with perfect confidence what has happened and what will happen in the
remotest ages, what would the result be? Actually, in the one field in which
the wisdom of geology can be controlled, the finding of oil, it is calculated
that the experts are proven right only about 10 percent of the time. Now if a
man is wrong 90 percent of the time when he is glorying in the complete
mastery of his specialty, how far should we trust the same man when he takes
to pontificating on the mysteries? No scientific conclusion is to be trusted
without testing, to the extent to which exact sciences are exact they are also
experimental sciences; it is in the laboratory that the oracle must be
consulted. But the archaeologist is denied access to the oracle. For him there
is no neat and definitive demonstration; he is doomed to plod along,
everlastingly protesting and fumbling, through a laborious, often rancorous
running debate that never ends.
To make a significant discovery in physics or mathematics or philology,
one must first know a good deal about the subject; but the greatest
archaeological discoveries of recent years were made by ignorant peasants and
illiterate shepherd boys. From that it follows, as the handbooks on
archaeology never tire of pointing out, that the proper business of the
archaeologist is not so much the finding of stuff as being able to recognize
what one has found. Yet even there the specialist enjoys no monopoly. Dr.
Joseph Saad, who directed the excavations at Khirbet Qumran, tells of many
instances in which the local Arabs were able to explain findings that
completely baffled the experts from the West, to the rage and chagrin of the
latter. Hence Sir Mortimer Wheeler warns the archaeologist: "Do not ignore the
opinion of the uninstructed. `Everyone knows as much as the savant. . . . '
Emerson said so and he was right. "
With everybody getting into the act, it is not surprising that the
history of archaeology is largely the story of bitter jealousies and frightful
feuds. Archaeology mercilessly accentuates certain qualities characteristic of
all research but often glosses over the exact sciences. The elements of
uncertainty, surprise, and disappointment, and the pervasive role of
speculation and imagination, with all the unconscious conditioning and
prejudice that implies, are not merely regrettable defects in
archaeology, they are the very stuff of which the picturesque discipline is
composed. "What in fact is Archaeology?" asks Sir Mortimer, and answers, "I do
not myself really know. . . . I do not even know whether Archaeology is to be
described as an art or a science." Even on the purely technical side, he
points out, "There is no right way of digging, but there are many wrong
ways."
The idea of archaeology as the key to a man's origin and destiny was
introduced as a weapon of anti-clerical polemic in the revolutionary movements
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reimar's "hate-filled pamphlet" on
history and the New Testament launched the "scientific" attack on the Bible,
and when Boucher de Perthes, a child of the French Revolution, found stone
"hand-axes" among the flints of Abbeville he published them in five stately
volumes entitled, with pontifical finality, "On the Creation." These objects,
whose use and origin are still disputed, were to be nothing less than the key
to the creation. Such fantastic leaps of the mind reveal the fierce
determination of the first modern archaeologists to "get something" on the
Bible. It was inevitable that biblical archaeology should become little more
than "an offshoot of Darwinism. " The great Lamarck, before he even came up
with his explanation of the creation, was animated "by a severe . . .
philosophical hostility, amounting to hatred, for the tradition of the Deluge
and the Biblical creation story, indeed for everything which recalled the
Christian theory of nature." And Darwin writes of himself in his twenties: "I
had gradually come, by this time, to see that the Old Testament from its
manifestly false history of the world and from its attributing to God the
feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred
books of the Hindoos [sic], or the beliefs of any barbarian. . . . By further
reflecting. . . that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more
incredible do miracles become, that the men at that time were ignorant and
credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible to us. . . . This disbelief
crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so
slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted for a single second
that my conclusion was correct."
This is a very revealing statement, a rich compound of cliches, a
testament of Victorian smugness: "manifestly false . . . revengeful tyrant. .
. any barbarian. . . fixed laws of nature . . . never doubted for a single
second." Those are the words of a man who knows all the answers and is proud
rather than ashamed of his unflinching loyalty to his adolescent prejudices.
Just how much would a young English theology student in the 1820s know about
the real history of the world, books of the Hindus, or "the beliefs of any
barbarian"? Next to nothing, is putting it mildly, but it was enough to put
the stamp of "complete disbelief" on Darwin's thinking forever after. Students
commonly assume that it was the gradual amassing of evidence that in time
constrained such men to part company with the Bible. Exactly the opposite is
the case: long before they had the evidence, they brought to their researches
such an unshakable determination to discredit the book of Genesis that the
discovery of the evidence was a foregone conclusion. It was Darwin's bosom
friend and spokesman who blurted out the real issue with characteristic
bluntness: "Darwin himself avoided attacking the Bible, but for Huxley, his
doughty champion against all comers," writes J. C. Greene, "the battle against
the doctrine of inspiration, whether plenary or otherwise, was the crucial
engagement in the fight for evolution and for freedom of scientific enquiry."
The battle was against revelation, and evolution was the weapon forged for the
conflict. We must not be misled by that inevitable tag about "freedom of
scientific enquiry." When a Tennessee high-school teacher was fired for
teaching evolution in 1925, the whole civilized world was shocked and revolted
at such barbaric restriction on freedom of thought; yet at the same time there
was not an important college or even high school in the country that would
hire a man who dared to preach against evolution. Freedom of thought indeed.
The great debate between "science" and "religion" has been a duel in the
dark. How do things stand between the picture that "archaeology" gives us of
the past and the picture that the scriptures give us? Take the biblical image
first: the best efforts of the best artists back through the years to
represent a clear picture of things described in the Bible look to us simply
comical. Even the conscientious Flemish artists, using the best Oriental
knowledge of their time, paint Solomon or Holofernes as boozy Landgraves at a
fancy dress ball, while the masters of the Italian Renaissance show their
prophets and apostles affecting the prescribed dress and stock gestures of
traveling Sophists of the antique world. We are no better today, with our
handsome "Bible Lands" books, based on diligent research, showing Jesus or
Elijah in the garb of modern Bedouins or Ramallah peasants moving through the
eroded terrain of modern Palestine or discoursing beneath arches and gates of
Norman and Turkish design. The moral of this is that no matter where we get
our information, our picture of the Bible is bound to be out of focus, for it
will always be based on inadequate data, and it will always be of our own
construction. And at no time did the Christian world have a more distorted
picture of the Bible than in the nineteenth century. To the Victorians,
creaking with culture and refinement, it was easy and pleasant to assign all
other creatures their proper place and station in the world-for that is what
evolution does. Their outspoken objection to Mormonism was that it was utterly
barbaric, an intolerable affront to an enlightened and scientific age. Huxley
declared with true scientific humility that the difference between a
cultivated man of his own day and a native of the forest was as great as that
between the native and a blade of grass. What possible understanding could
these people have of the real Bible world? Taken at face value the Bible was a
disgustingly primitive piece of goods, "poor stuff," John Stuart Mill
pronounced it; the work of people "ignorant and credulous to a degree almost
incomprehensible to us," as Darwin said, for this, of course, was the Bible
that Darwin rejected: in it he was attacking an image that was the product of
his own culture and nothing else.
Archaeology today "in our universities and schools," according to
Wheeler, "forms innocuous pools of somewhat colorless knowledge, mostly a
refined Darwinism, in which our kindergartens are encouraged to paddle."
Again, everybody gets into the act. My own children, long before they could
read, write, or count, could tell you exactly how things were upon the earth
millions and millions of years ago. But did the little scholars really know?
"What is our knowledge of the past and how do we obtain it?" asks the eminent
archaeologist Stuart Piggott, and answers: "The past no longer exists for us,
even the past of yesterday. . . . This means that we can never have direct
knowledge of the past. We have only information or evidence from which we can
construct a picture." The fossil or potsherd or photograph that I hold in my
hand may be called a fact, it is direct evidence, an immediate experience; but
my interpretation of it is not a fact, it is entirely a picture of my own
construction. I cannot experience ten thousand or forty million years, I can
only imagine, and the fact that my picture is based on facts does not make it
a fact, even when I think the evidence is so clear and unequivocal as to allow
no other interpretation. Archaeology brings home this lesson every day, as Sir
Flinders Petrie pointed out, for in no other field does interpretation count
for so much. "The excavator," writes Sir Leonard Woolley, "is constantly
subject to impressions too subjective and too intangible to be communicated,
and out of these, by no exact logical process, there arise theories which he
can state, can perhaps support, but cannot prove. . . . They have their value
as summing up experiences which no student of his objects and notes can ever
share." Yet what makes scientific knowledge scientific is that it can be
shared. "There are fires," writes a leading student of American archaeology,
"which man may, or may not, have lit, animals he may, or may not, have
killed, and crudely flaked stone objects, which those most qualified to judge
think he did not make. By weight of numbers these finds have been built into
an impression of probability, but the idol has feet of clay." This is the
normal state of things when we are dealing with the past: "If one certainty
does emerge from this accumulation of uncertainties," writes an eminent
geologist, "it is the deep impression of the vastness of geologic time." An
"accumulation of uncertain- ties" leaves the student ("by weight of numbers")
with an "impression" which he thereupon labels a "certainty."
Yet with examples gross as earth to exhort him, the archaeologist is
constantly slipping into the normal occupational hazard of letting the theory
rather than the facts call the tune. For years archaeologists always assumed
that pieces could be chipped from the surface of stones merely by exposure to
the burning sun, they never bothered to put their theory to the test, though
no one ever was present when the sun did its chipping. From Breasted's
Ancient Times, millions of high-school students have learned how primitive man
woke one morning in his camp in the Sinai Peninsula to find that bright copper
beads had issued from the greenish rocks with which he banked his fire that
night. It was not until 1939 that a scientist at Cambridge actually went to
the trouble to see if copper could be smelted from an open fire, and
discovered that it was absolutely impossible. Nobody had bothered to check up
on these simple things like the Aristotelians who opposed the experimenting of
Galileo, the men of science felt no need to question the obvious. If man had
been on the earth for, say, 100,000 years, scattered everywhere in tiny groups
subsisting on a near-animal level, could we possibly find the cultural and
linguistic patterns we do in the world today? After fifty thousand years of
local isolation, is it conceivable that languages at opposite ends of the
earth should be recognizably related? Only in our day are such elementary
questions beginning to be asked, often with surprising and disturbing results.
But however vast the accumulation of facts may become, our picture of the past
and the future will always be, not partly but wholly, the child of our own
trained and conditioned imaginations. "The world will always be different from
any statement that science can give of it," a philosopher of science writes,
and he explains: "that is, we are looking for an opportunity to restate any
statement which we can give of the world. . . . We are always restating our
statement of the world." Scholarship is also an age-old, open-ended
discussion in which the important thing is not to be right at a given moment
but to be able to enter seriously into the discussion. That I cannot do if I
must depend on the opinion of others, standing helplessly by until someone
else pronounces a verdict, and then cheering loudly to show that I too am a
scholar.
Because interpretation plays an all-important role in it, archaeology has
been carried on against a background of ceaseless and acrimonious controversy,
with theory and authority usually leading fact around by the nose. If the
great Sir Arthur Evans decided eighty years ago that the Minoans and
Mycenaeans were not Greeks, then evidence discovered today must be discounted
if it shows they were Greeks; if it was concluded long ago that the Jews did
not write in Hebrew at the time of Christ, then Hebrew documents from that
time if they are discovered today must be forgeries. "Does our time scale,
then, partake of natural law?" a geologist wonders. "No. . . . I wonder how
many of us realize that the time scale was frozen in essentially its present
form by 1840. . . ? The followers of the founding fathers went forth across
the earth and in Procrustean fashion made it fit the sections they found even
in places where the actual evidence literally proclaimed denial. So flexible
and accommodating are the `facts' of geology." "Science," said Whitehead, "is
our modern-day dogmatism." There is something cozy and old-fashioned, almost
nostalgic, in the archaeology of forty years ago with its invincible meliorism
and romantic faith in man's slow, steady, inevitable onward and upward march.
But archaeology is the science of surprises, and the most desperate efforts of
accommodation have not been able to discredit the sensational changes of our
day.
"One of the most exciting results of the radio-carbon dating," writes
Piggott," . . . has been to emphasize how rapidly and severely the environment
was modified." Extreme and rapid changes of environment have long been
anathema to science. "Darwin's secret, learned from Lyell," according to H.
F. Osborn, was (in Lyell's own words) that "all theories are rejecting that
which involves the assumption of sudden and violent catastrophes." In a world
of nuclear explosions this seems downright funny, but it "was a perfect
expression," as Egon Friedell has written, "of the English temperament and
comfortable middle- class view of the world that refused to believe in sudden
and violent metamorphoses, world uprising, and world calamities." One of the
most militant evolutionists of our day says that "it remains true, as every
paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and nearly
all categories above the level of families, appear in `the record suddenly,
and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional
sequences. " One wonders why if most species appear on the scene suddenly
without millions of years of evolutionary preparation leading up to them, the
human race cannot have done the same. "Because it didn't," we are told. For a
hundred years, thousands of scientists have devoted their lives to proving
that it didn't; yet all they have to offer us as proof to date is a large and
cluttered science fair of bizarre and competing models, interesting but
mutually damaging.
Through the years the writer, who is no archaeologist, has had to keep
pretty well abreast of the journals and consult occasionally with
archaeologists in order to carry on his own varied projects. Anyone who has
any contact at all with what is going on is aware that the significant trend
since World War II has been the steady drawing together of far-flung peoples
and cultures of antiquity into a single surprisingly close-knit fabric. Early
in the present century an "Egyptologist" could make fun of the "amusing
ignorance" of the Pearl of Great Price, in which "Chaldeans and Egyptians are
hopelessly mixed together, although as dissimilar and remote in language,
religion, and locality as are today's American Indians and Chinese." Today a
ten-year-old would be reprimanded for such a statement, since now we know that
Chaldeans and Egyptians were "hopelessly mixed together" from the very
beginning of history. Even as late as the 1930s so eminent a scholar as T. E.
Peet had to exercise extreme caution, suggesting that there might be any
resemblance between the literatures of Babylonia, Palestine, Egypt, and
Greece. Today we know better, as every month establishes more widely and more
firmly the common ties that knit all the civilizations of the ancient world
together.
A hundred years ago, investigators of prehistory already sensed "the
essential unity of the earlier Stone Age cultures throughout the Old World."
From the very beginning of the race "at a given period in the Pleistocene,"
writes Piggott, "one can take, almost without selection, tools from South
India, Africa and South England which show identical techniques of manufacture
and form. . . .What happened at one end of the area seems to be happening more
or less simultaneously at the other." I have never seen any attempt to
account for this astounding worldwide coordination in the industries of
primitive beings who supposedly could communicate to their nearest neighbors
only by squeals and grunts. In the mid-nineteenth century the folklorists were
beginning to notice that the same myths and legends turned up everywhere in
the Old and New Worlds, and philologists were discovering the same thing about
languages; today Hockett and Asher are bemused by the "striking lack of
diversity in certain features of language" and make the astounding
announcement that "phonological systems [of all the languages of the world]
show much less variety than could easily be invented by any linguist working
with pencil and paper." The same authorities note that "man shows an
amazingly small amount of racial diversity," and pardonably wonder "why human
racial diversity is so slight, and. . . why the languages and cultures of all
communities, no matter how diverse, are elaborations of a single inherited
`common denominator.'" With a million years of savagery and hostility,
ignorance, isolation, and bestial suspicion to keep them divided, it seems
that men should have had plenty of time to develop a vast number of separate
"denominators" of language, legend, race, and culture. But that is not the
picture we get at all.
In religion it is the same. It was not until 1930 that a group of
researchers at Cambridge cautiously presented evidence for the prevalence
through the ancient world of a single pattern of kingship, an elaborate
religious-economic-political structure that could not possibly have been
invented independently in many places. We do not find, as we have every right
to expect, an infinite variety of exotic religious rites and concepts; instead
we find a single overall pattern, but one so peculiar and elaborate that it
cannot have been the spontaneous production of primitive minds operating in
isolation from each other.
When history begins, "let us say c. 5000 B.C.," to follow J. Mellaart,
"we find throughout the greater part of the Near East . . . villages, market
towns . . . and castles of local rulers" widely in touch with each other as
"goods and raw materials were traded over great distances." It is essentially
the same picture we find right down to the present; and we find it
everywhere, if we go to distant China "the life of the Shang [the oldest
known] population can have differed little in essentials from that of the
populous city-states of the Bronze Age Mesopotamia," or from that of the
peasants of the Danube or of "the earliest English farming culture. " This is
what has come out since World War II. Before that, archaeology had made us
progressively aware of the oneness of our world with successive discoveries of
Amarna, Ugarit, Boghazkeui, Nuzi, and so on, each one tying all the great Near
Eastern civilizations closer and closer together while revealing the
heretofore unsuspected presence of great nations and empires as active and
intimate participants in a single drama. And the Bible is right in the center
of it: the patriarchs who had been reduced to solar myths by the higher
critics suddenly turned out to be flesh-and-blood people; odd words, concepts
and expressions, and institutions of the Bible started turning up in records
of great antiquity; the Hittites, believed to be a myth by Bible scholars
until 1926, suddenly emerged as one of the greatest civilizations the world
has ever seen. Since then a dozen almost equally great empires have been
discovered, and the preliminary studies of each of them have shown in every
case that they had more or less intimate ties with the great Classical and
Middle Eastern civilizations. The picture of ancient civilization as a whole
has become steadily broader and at the same time more uniform, so that the
growing impression is one of monotony bordering on drabness. Seton Lloyd is
depressed by "the drab impersonality of the `archaeological ages.'"
Archaeology gives us, as M. P. Nilsson puts it, "a picture-book without a
text"; or, in the words of Sir Mortimer, "the archaeologist may find the tub
but altogether miss Diogenes." The eager visitor to a hundred recent diggings
is fated to discover that people once lived in stone or brick or wooden
houses, cooked their food (for they ate food) in pots of clay or metal over
fires, hunted, farmed, fished, had children, died, and were buried. Wherever
we go, it is just more of the same-all of which we could have assumed in the
first place. The romance of archaeology has always resided not in the known
but in the unknown, and enough is known today to suggest the terrifying
verdict that a great Cambridge scientist pronounced on the physical sciences a
generation ago: "The end is in sight."
And now we come to the crux of the matter. As the tub without Diogenes
has nothing to do with philosophy, so archaeology without the prophets has
nothing to do with religion. "You cannot," says Piggott, "from archaeological
evidence, inform yourself on man's ideas, beliefs, fears or aspirations. You
cannot understand what his works of art or craftsmanship signified to him."
The ancient patriarchs and prophets ate out of ordinary dishes, sat on
ordinary chairs, wore ordinary clothes, spoke the vernacular, wrote on
ordinary paper and skins, and were buried in ordinary graves. The illusion of
the pilgrims to the holy land, Christian, Moslem and Jewish, that this is not
so, that is, that contact with such objects by holy men rendered them
holy-gave rise to Biblical archaeology at an early time. The Palestine
pilgrims from Origen and Gregory to Robinson and Schaff had all been looking
for extra-special things, for miraculous or at least wonderful objects. Men
who viewed the idea of living prophets as a base superstition turned to the
dead stones of the "Holy Land" for heavenly consolation, and enlisted
archaeology in the cause of faith. But though archaeology may conceivably
confirm the existence of a prophet (though it has never yet done so), it can
never prove or disprove the visions that make the prophet a significant
figure. Former attempts to explain the scriptures in terms of nature-myths,
animism, and psychology had nothing to do with reality. What can archaeology
tell me about the council in heaven? Nothing, of course, that all happened in
another world. The same holds for the creation, taking place as it did at a
time and place and in a manner that we cannot even imagine. Then comes the
garden of Eden, a paradise and another world beyond our ken. It is only when
Adam and Eve enter this world that they come down to our level. Strangely
enough, the biblical image is not that of our first parents entering a
wonderful new world, but leaving such to find themselves in a decidedly dreary
place of toil and tears. Before long the children of Adam are building cities
and are completely launched on the familiar and drab routines of civilized
living: "dreary" suggests old and tired, and there is nothing fresh or new
about the Adamic Age.
On the archaeological side we have Jericho, by general consensus (as of
the moment) the oldest city in the world. It emerges abruptly full-blown, with
a sophisticated and stereotyped architecture that remains unchanged for
twenty-one successive town-levels, and from the first it displays a way of
life substantially the same as that carried on by the inhabitants of the
nearby towns right down to the present day. This has come as a great surprise;
it is not at all consistent with the official model of the onward and upward
march of civilization that we all learned about at school. When the
civilization of China was rediscovered by European missionaries in the
seventeenth century, skeptics and atheists saw in it a crushing refutation of
the Bible, here was a great civilization thousands of years older and far
richer, wiser, and more splendid than anything Western man had imagined,
thriving in complete unawareness of God's plan of salvation. It was the
discovery of such other worlds, such island universes, that was once the
concern of archaeology, ever seeking the strange, the marvelous, and the
exotic. But now archaeology has found too much; the worlds are there, but they
are not isolated, not even China; they are all members of a single community,
and by far the best handbook guide to the nature and identity of that
community remains the Bible.
1. Sloan, Raymond D., "The Future of the Exploration Geologist-Can He
Meet the Challenge?" Geotimes 3, no. 1 (1958), p. 6. "Only one wildcat well in
nine discovers oil or gas: only one in forty-four is profitable." In spite of
scientific methods, "the high risks. . . are unusual in the business world."
(Sloan, pp. 6,7.)
2. Wheeler, Sir Robert Eric Mortimer, Archaeology from the Earth
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), p. 50.
3. Wheeler, p. 2.
4. Jeremias, Joachim, "The Present Position in the Controversy
Concerning the Problem of the Historical Jesus," Expository Times 69 (1958):
333.
5. Rapport, Samuel, and Helen Wright, eds., Archaeology (New York: New
York University Library of Science, 1963), pp. 18-20.
6. Gall, August Freiheryn von, Basileia tou Theou (Heidelberg: Winter,
1926), p. 12, discussing the Wellhausen school.
7. Gillespie, Charles Coulston, "Lamarck and Darwin in the History of
Science, " American Scientist 46 (Dec. 1958): 397.
8. Darwin, Charles, Autobiography (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959),
describing the period between 1836 and 1839. Darwin was born in 1809.
9. Green, John C., "Darwin and Religion," Proceedings of the American
Philosophical Society 103(1959): 717.
10. Wheeler, p. 23.
11. Piggott, Stuart, ed., The Dawn of Civilization (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 11.
12. Petrie, William Matthew Flinders, Social Life in Ancient Egypt
(1923), part 3, pp. 80, 81.
13. Woolley, Leonard, Digging Up the Past (New York: Crowell, 1954),p.
119
14. Bushnell, G.H.S., "The Birth and Growth of New World Civilization,"
in Piggott, p. 377.
15. Swinnerton, Henry Hurd, The Earth Beneath Us (Boston: Little- Brown,
1955), p. 15.
16. Morgan, Jacques Jean Marie de, La Prehistoire Orientale (Paris: Paul
Geuthner, 1925), II, pp. 4ff., discusses this phenomenon, with pictures of
"hatchet-shaped seile chipped by the heat of the sun." (Fig. 2.)
17. Coghlan, H. H., "Some Experiments on the Origin of Early Copper,"Man
39(1939): 106-8.
18. Mead, George H., Movements of Thought in the 19th Century (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1936), p. 508, discussing Bergson.
19. Spieker, Edmund M., "Mountain-Building Chronology and Nature of
Geologic Time Scale," Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists 40 (August 1956): 1803; cf. Norman D. Newell, Proceedings of the
American Philosophical Society 103(1959): 265.
20. Piggott, p. 40.
21. Osborn, Henry Fairfield, The Origin and Evolution of Life (New York:
Scribner's, 1918), p. 24.
22. Lyell, Charles, Principles of Geology (New York: John Murray, 1872)
1:318.
23. Friedell, Egon, Kulturgeschichte Aegyptens unddes alten Orients
(Mûnchen: C.H. Beck, 1953), p. 105.
24. Simpson, George Gaylord, The Major Features of Evolution (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1953), p. 360.
25. Peters, John, in Rev. Franklin S. Spalding, Joseph Smith as a
Translator (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1912), p. 28.
26. Peet, Thomas Eric, A Comparative Study of the Literatures of Egypt,
Palestine and Mesopotamia (London: British Academy, 1931), pp. 52f., 96f.,
127-29,113-16.
27. Piggott, Stuart, Prehistoric India (London: Cassell, 1950), p. 26.
28. Hockett, Charles F., and Robert Ascher, "The Human Revolution,"
American Scientist 52(1964): 90.
29. Hockett, p.90.
30. Hockett and Ascher insist not only that man had already achieved the
essence of language and culture at least a million years ago (p. 89), but that
"the crucial developments must have taken place once, and then spread" by that
time, since "true diversity is found in more superficial aspects of language"
but not in the fundamental aspect (p. 90). That is, all the languages of the
world have retained recognizable ties to a parent language from which they
separated over a million years ago! Since C. S. Coon puts the age of the human
race at about 50,000 years, this is quite a thing.
31. Lord Raglan, The Origins of Religion (London: Watts and Co., 1949).
32. Mellaart, James, "The Beginning of Village and Urban Life," in
Piggott, Dawn of Civilization, p. 62.
33. Watson, William, in Piggott, p. 271.
34. Sieveking, Gale, "China: The Civilization of a Single People," in
Edward Bacon, Vanished Civilizations of the Ancient World (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1963), this being the Windmill Hill site of 2750 B.C.
35. For a good survey, see Sieveking's paper in the preceding footnote,
which deals in major civilizations of which we have virtually no history but
all of which are definitely tied to the great civilizations of antiquity.
36. Seton, Lloyd, "The Early Settlement of Anatolla," in Piggott, p.185.
37. Nilsson, Martin Persson, Minoan and Mycenaean Religion (Lund: C. W.
K. Gleerup, 1950), p. 7.
38. Wheeler, p. 214.
39. Piggott, p. 15.
40. We have discussed this in the Jewish Quarterly Review 50 (1959):
99ff., 109ff.
41. Lord RagIan, p. 38.
"Archaeology and Our Religion," accompanied by two cover letters dated
September 16,1965, was originally intended to be included in the "I Believe"
series in the Instructor.
A student confronted for the first time by classical and Oriental myths
that read like reruns of well-known Bible stories, such as the garden of Eden
episode and the Flood, often goes into a sort of shock, emerging from which he
announces to family and friends that he has just discovered a fact of life:
the Bible is just a lot of mythology.
Such a conclusion may be the result of a faulty approach to the Bible as
well as to the myths. The first thing to do in such a case is to apply cold
packs and calm the student down, pointing out to him that such deeply
religious writers as Dante and Milton not only were aware of many parallels
between Christian and pagan lore and imagery, but also freely mingled the two
together in constructing their faith-promoting epics.
Some of the earliest religious writers were edified by the Egyptian
Phoenix, and the later Fathers of the traditional church diligently catalogued
those heathen myths and doctrines that most closely resembled their own
beliefs as proof that the gentiles had always pirated the true teachings of
the prophets and patriarchs.
The idea was that the Egyptians had picked up a lot of stuff from the
Israelites during the latter's sojourn in Egypt, and of course the Egyptians
got it all mixed up. Also, since Adam, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham had all left
writings behind long before Moses, it was only to be expected that in times of
apostasy their teachings, in contaminated form, should fall into profane
hands.
There is a good deal to be said for this theory, for the myths and rites
of all the ancient world, if traced backward in time, do show a marked
tendency to conform more and more to a few basic themes and to converge on a
limited geographical area as their apparent place of origin. But whatever the
real explanation, there is a very real relationship between the biblical and
the worldwide pagan traditions. There has been no question of proving that
such a relationship existed; however, there has always been the neglected task
of showing just what that relationship is.
This sensible and promising line of approach to the problem of mythology
and the Bible has been vigorously rejected by the modern clergy, by
professional scholars, and by the literate.
1. The clergy, Christian and Jewish alike, have insisted before all else
on the absolute originality and uniqueness of the teachings of Christ and
Moses respectively, laboring under the strange illusion that if anything
coming from any other source shows a close resemblance to those teachings, the
claims of the founders to originality and hence to divinity are in serious
jeopardy.
A close resemblance between biblical and nonbiblical teachings and
practices is necessarily a "suspicious resemblance." Theologians have worked
out their own theory of communication between God and man, which they have
strictly limited as to time and place, allowing no latitude whatever for the
possibility of anything occurring that is not accounted for in the Bible.
Indeed, the Fathers of the fourth century insist that we may safely
assume that whatever is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible could not
possibly have occurred, over or anywhere.
The present-day insistence, especially by the Catholics (though
vigorously challenged by the brilliant Jesuit Hugo Rahner), on the absolute
originality of Jesus is the result of total rejection of the idea of
dispensations. If we know, however, that the gospel has been on the earth from
time to time ever since the days of Adam, then it is easily understandable
that recognizable fragments of it should be seen floating around in sundry
times and places.
But "dispensationism" has long been anathema to the clergy. Hence their
hostility to the Apocrypha, their marked coolness to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and
their hot denunciation of Joseph Smith for giving the world ancient writings
that not only resemble the Bible but also lay claim to the same inspiration
while widening the horizon of God's covenant people to include times and
places heretofore undreamed of.
2. Professional scholars, who as a matter of course reject the whole idea
of inspired writings, have been as reluctant as the clergy to recognize
resemblances between the myths and legends of various parts of the world as
being anything but the purest coincidence. The reason for this is departmental
pride. For example, a Celtic or Semitic scholar may very well know more about
Greek than I do; but if Greek is my one and only field, I may still turn up my
nose with a great show of scientific skepticism and technical superiority, and
categorically refuse to consider even the possibility of a relationship
between the documents I can read and the documents I cannot read.
A dazzling demonstration of this type of precious myopia was the
century-long refusal of Egyptologists to acknowledge any connection whatever
between Israel and Egypt (they used it as an argument against Joseph Smith),
though links and ties confronted them at every turn. When Erman finally showed
beyond a doubt that an important piece of Egyptian wisdom literature also
turned up in the body of Hebrew wisdom literature, he was almost ashamed of
his discovery and never followed it up.
Secular scholars, on the other hand, have been quick to take any
resemblance between heathen traditions and the Bible as absolute proof that
the scriptures are simply ordinary stuff. The classic example of this was the
Babylonian flood story, discovered by Layard in the mid-nineteenth century. It
resembled the biblical account closely enough to show without doubt that they
were connected, but before any search for the source of either version was
undertaken, it was joyfully announced that the biblical account was derived
from the Babylonian and was, therefore, a fraud. The experts were wrong on
both points, the Assurbanipal version is really a late redaction, and the
duplication of the flood story, instead of weakening it, actually confirms it.
Indeed, if there really were a universal flood, it would be very strange if
memories of it did not turn up in many places, as in fact they do.
3. Most students learn about ancient myths from teachers and textbooks of
literature by way of the late classic poets to whom the myths were little more
than literary playthings. A student cannot understand "A Midsummer Night's
Dream" without knowing something about the many myths that cluster about the
figure of Theseus, but the teacher's only concern is to put the student in the
literary picture, and for that a trip to the handbook suffices.
For the student of literature, the myths are but handy aids to the
writer, useful devices for achieving decorative or erudite effects, as they
were once the paint and gilt of decadent poetry. Since the day of Augustus,
the literati have had neither the desire nor the equipment to look beneath the
surface.
Hardly worth mentioning at this date is the nineteenth century
Wissenschaft, which inevitably explained everything as "nature
myth", primitive man's reaction to his natural environment. The ancient
Sophists played around with that idea, naively assuming, as did the scholars
and scientists of a hundred years ago, that any reasonable explanation for a
phenomenon that they could come up with would necessarily be the true and
correct answer, how could it be otherwise if it was a strictly rational
conclusion free of all superstition and religion? It was an impressive
exhibition of scientific gullibility, but it is not taken seriously today, now
that we know a lot more about ancient myths than we did.
In recent years the early myths have acquired a new status and dignity. A
steady accumulation of comparative studies tying this to that and these to
those now crams the stacks of our libraries. Spread out before the mind's eye,
their myriad pages interweave into a grandiose texture, a vast shadowy
tapestry in which we begin to discern the common backdrop of all history and
religion.
But the books are still sedulously segregated and widely distributed
among the floors and alcoves of the library, and to bring them all together
into the one organic whole from which they were taken is a task that will yet
tax the capacity of the computer. Meanwhile, we must imagine the pieces of
this huge jigsaw puzzle as heaped in separate piles, each representing a
special field of study or cultural area, from Iceland to Polynesia. To date no
one has taken the trouble to integrate the materials in even one of these
hundred-odd piles; and as to taking up the whole lot and relating every pile
to every other, so far only a few bold suggestions have come from men of
genius like G. Santillana, Cyrus Gordon, or Robert Graves, whose proposals get
chilly reception from specialized scholars who can only be alarmed by such
boldness and appalled by the work entailed in painting the whole picture.
But such study as has been done shows us that the old myths are by no
means pure fiction, any more than they are all history. As the Muses told
Hesiod, "We know both how to fib and how to tell the truth"; and, as Joseph
Smith learned of the Apocrypha, "there are many things contained therein that
are true, and there are many things contained therein that are not true" (see
D&C 91), all of which means that we must be very careful in accepting and
condemning.
Today, formidable task forces of first-rate scholars and scientists are
working on the Atlantis problem, whereas a very few years ago anyone careless
enough to express interest in that question was announcing his candidacy for
the asylum. The world that "deepbrowed Homer" was supposed to have conjured up
out of his own head has in our own day taken on flesh and blood, and today we
read the novels of Marie Renault or Robert Graves with a feeling that Theseus
or Heracles were probably real persons who did at least something like the
deeds attributed to them.
If we attempt to untangle the probably historical from the fanciful, we
soon discover the common ground on which they meet and fuse: it is ritual.
Myths arise at attempts to explain ritual doings, whose meaning has been
forgotten, "What mean these stones?" After much discussion back and forth, the
consensus now emerges that it is the rites and ordinances that come first.
This should have been clear from the outset, since myths and legends are
innumerable while the rites and ordinances found throughout the world are
surprisingly few and uniform, making it quite apparent that it is the stories
that are invented, the rites are always there.
Such indeed has always been the Latter-day Saint position. Adam first
performed an ordinance and when asked to give an explanation of it replied
that he knew of none "save the Lord commanded me." (Moses 5:6.) Then it was
that the true explanation came forth from the mouth of a heavenly instructor.
But if in later times members of some distant tribe, having inherited the
rites, were asked to explain them, they would have to come up with some
invented stories of their own, and that would be myth. It is in their contact
with ritual that history and fantasy share a common ground and mingle with
each other.
Take the model heroes Theseus and Heracles, for example. We know that
they are ritual figures because they repeatedly get themselves involved in
well-known ritual situations. Thus each in his wanderings is not once but
often the guest of a king who tries to put him to death, forcing the hero to
turn the tables and slay the host or his officiating high priest in the manner
intended for himself. The nature of this business is now well understood,
thanks to hundreds of similar examples collected from all over the world and
from every century, making it clear that we have to do with an established
routine practice of inviting a noble, visiting stranger to be the substitute
for the king, on the throne, in the favor of the queen, and finally and all
too quickly on the sacrificial altar, thus sparing the king himself the
discomfort and inconvenience of being ritually put to death at the end of a
sacred cycle of years. This exotic little drama was more than a fiction; It
was an actual practice, surviving in some parts of the world down to modern
times, but flourishing with particular vigor in the Near East around 1400
B.C., the period to which most of the Greek myths belong.
Since, as we have said, myths are invented or adjusted to explain ritual,
the two are naturally identified, and hence any event reported in a myth is
customarily dismissed as purely mythical. But that won't do any more, because
such strange ceremonial events actually did take place, regularly and
repeatedly.
Ancient civilization was hierocentric, centered around the temple. The
everyday activities of farming, trade, and war were all ritually bound to the
cycle of the year and the cosmos. The great periodic rites were of a dramatic
nature, but they were none the less real: a coronation is the purest ceremony,
yet for all that it is still real recorded history; a war or migration, though
only too real to its victims, would be carried out with strict ritual
propriety, according to the religious rules of the game. It is hard for us to
understand this ritualizing of history, but once it was a very real thing, and
one can still find it miraculously surviving among the Hopi.
So when the ancient myths from all over the world show us the same
situations and the same adventures and monsters recurring again and again, we
may look upon this endless repetition not as discrediting the historicity of
those events and situations but as confirming it. These myths tell about such
things happening because that was the type of thing that did happen, and the
ritual nature of the event guaranteed that it should happen not once but over
and over again.
Nothing illustrates this principle better than the long-despised (by
scholars and clergy) and neglected book of Abraham. Since we have chosen
Theseus and Heracles as our archetypes, we may well consider the most
spectacular and celebrated stories of how each escaped from his inhospitable
host. The last and worst actor that Theseus had to deal with was Procrustes,
whose notorious murder bed has become proverbial. Was there such a bed? A
century ago the Egyptologist Lefebure noted that there are quite a number of
old traditions around the eastern Mediterranean about kings who built cruelly
ingenious altars, sometimes mechanically operated, usually of metal, and
shaped like beds, on which they would put to death their noble guests.
In 1859, B. Beer pointed out for the first time that Abraham belongs in
the old Procrustes tradition, noting that the wicked Cities of the Plain where
Abraham was given a bad time all had in their central marketplaces ritual beds
on which they would sacrifice strangers by stretching them out if they were
too short and whacking them off if they were too tall to match the exact
length of the bed. This, of course, is the celebrated Procrustes technique,
and Beer duly notes that Procrustes' other name, Damastes, has exactly the
same meaning as Sodom, the "Forcer" or "Violator." Furthermore, Beer reports
early traditions telling how Eleazer, when he went to represent Abraham in
those cities, appeared there in the exact form and stature of Abraham and
narrowly escaped being put to death on such a bed. So we have Abraham on the
altar as another Theseus or Heracles, surprisingly sharing the fate of the
great patriarch of the Athenians!
But Lefebure also notices that Theseus and the bed of Procrustes have a
close counterpart in the story of Heracles' most famous and sensational
escape. This took place not in Greece nor in Asia, but in Egypt, at the court
of Pharaoh. The Greeks regarded this as the first and oldest example of the
oft-repeated royal sacrifice of an honored visitor, the archetype of them all,
and they always located it in Busiris, which actually was from prehistoric
times on down, the most celebrated and venerated center of human sacrifice in
Egypt.
Egyptologists do not doubt the reality of a periodic sacrifice of the
king of Egypt in early times, or the practice of drafting a substitute
(preferably a noble, redheaded stranger) to take his place, first on the
throne to establish his identity with the king, and then on the altar. So we
have a three-way tie-up, and a very firm one, in which Theseus is related to
Heracles as an intended victim on the famous "cruel altar" of a desperate and
designing king. The same Theseus is also related to Abraham in a like
situation by the peculiar name and nature of his evil host Procrustes. And
Abraham in turn is tied to Heracles as the intended but miraculously delivered
victim on the altar of a pharaoh of Egypt.
What are we to make of these three heroes? Do their stereotyped
adventures cancel each other out? On the contrary, they confirm each other as
long as we recognize that the reality that lies behind them is a ritual
reality. The book of Abraham is particularly strong on this point, making much
of the awesome ceremonial nature of the doings in which the patriarch as a
young man got himself dangerously involved. We are dealing with
well-established routines of which nothing was known a few years ago.
Recently someone has noted that mention of the attempted sacrifice of
Abraham is to be found in the once widely read Bayle's "Dictionary" as early
as 1732 and suggested that that is where Joseph Smith got the story. But all
Bayle says on the subject is that there is a rabbinical tradition "that he was
cast by the Chaldeans into a fire, from which he emerged unscathed," with the
usual stereotyped observation that the story arose from a misreading of his
escape from "Ur," Ur meaning both "Ur" (the city) and "fire."
And that is the whole story, no mention of any altar, let alone a
description of deliverance by the angel accompanied by the disastrous
earthquake and other details that any reader of the book of Abraham knows
about. Bayle mentions the rabbis but gives us no references whatever. All this
is preserved in early Jewish tradition but was not published to the world
before 1859, and the really significant documents did not first see the light
until within the past twenty years or so. Actually, Joseph Smith's account of
Abraham is a highly unoriginal story, one that can be documented from a
hundred parallel sources. But nobody in Joseph Smith's day knew anything at
all about that story or dreamed of putting Abraham in the mythical picture
where he fits so nicely. The story is in every detail an authentic myth,
describing an authentic ritual, and as such is to be considered seriously as
authentic history.
Another example. To the Babylonian flood story and the Greek myth of
Deucalion (the Greeks made much of their forefather Japetus, Japheth), Joseph
Smith added yet another tale of the deluge, which he boldly attributed to the
Egyptians. It was the story of a great lady who came to Egypt just after the
flood, found the land still under water, and "settled her sons in it,"
establishing the monarch by matriarchal right. (Abraham 1:24.)
It was not until the second decade of the present century that H. Junker
gathered together the widely scattered Egyptian documents that told the same
story preserved by the Egyptians since the beginning of their history by being
ritually dramatized every year in a great national water festival. This
episode from the book of Abraham is, like the story of Abraham on the altar, a
perfect little vignette, placed with unerring accuracy in its proper ancient
setting. In conclusion, like those rare elements in deserted mines and dumps
that miners and prospectors have hitherto ignored but that now promise great
riches, the riches of mythology, so poorly worked in the past, still await the
serious exploitation made possible by new skills and techniques.
There is no telling what wonders may be brought to light simply by
bringing together new combinations and associations of documents already in
our possession. But from the few hesitating steps that have been made so far,
it already appears that the ancient myths, wherever they turn up, have a
tendency to fit together into the same picture, supporting and confirming each
other due to the solid ground on which they stand-the reality of ritual, by
which history becomes a religious phenomenon-as is markedly the case in the
annals of the Pharaohs. This leads us to conclude that there is a serious
historical reality behind the myths as a whole, in spite of the adjusting and
romancing that sometimes effaces them almost beyond recognition.
The myths thus provide us with a new and powerful tool for searching into
hitherto inaccessible recesses of the past. Though the use of this tool has
barely begun, it has already given us a useful means of checking up on the
revelations of Joseph Smith, showing us that what were thought by some of his
critics to be his wildest stories, the purest figments of his imagination,
turn out to be mythological commonplaces, overlooked by generations of
scholars and clergymen.
"Myths and the Scriptures" was published in the October 1971 New Era, pp. ~38.
I am often asked by students: What about those people that lived
thousands of years before Adam? They usually ask after class and expect me to
give a definitive answer before leaving the room. Why don't I bring up the
subject in class? I did for twenty years, and then gave it up, it was a waste
of time. Within the past ten years, however, things have changed so much that
it is time to resume the discussion if only to reorient my own thinking on a
subject that is impossible to avoid.
The Latter-day Saints are the only Bible-oriented people who have always
been taught that things were happening long, long before Adam appeared on the
scene. They have never appreciated just how revolutionary that idea is. It
does away with creatio ex nihilo, which, ever since the triumph of the School
of Alexandria, has been for Christian and Jewish theologians alike the only
possible definition of the word creation. In the April 1980 National
Geographic Magazine is a reproduction of a heroic relief sculpture on the wall
of the so-called National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., showing eight
full-grown human beings popping out of a turmoil of cloud. It is entitled
"Creatio ex nihilo, Out of the Void." It should not be hard to confound such
an absolute concept, since any alternative will do; and long before the time
of Christ the ancient Sophists, supplanting religion by naturalism, came up
with a scenario very close indeed to what we think of as evolution. And so we
get at an early time (at the trial of Socrates, in fact, at which,
incidentally, Socrates is the defender of religion, not the other way around!)
the sight of an apostate religion squaring off against an always inadequate
science. And the issue is never the merits of the evidence but always the
jealous rivalry of the contestants to see which would be the official light
unto the world.
Right down to the present day we have been the spectators of a foolish
contest between equally vain and bigoted rivals, in which it is a moot
question which side heaps the most contempt on God's creatures. For the
fundamentalist, to associate man too closely with God's other creatures was
the supreme insult to God and man. Man, say the Christian theologians,
faithfully following Aristotle, is the rational animal-the only rational
animal. All other beings in nature are soulless, speechless, thoughtless
automata. Moreover, Adam was not only the only rational, immortal creation of
God on earth, but the only intelligent actor on any solid world anywhere,
being created out of nothing on the only inhabited planet in the entire
universe-the solid earth, which was obviously the heavy center of everything,
around which all other things revolved and onto which everything fell. Beside
that, all was spirit.
The evolutionists took the doctors at their word and had a very easy time
showing that man shares so many visible qualities and traits with other
animals that if animals are mere "things" then so is man. Since they are able
to survive and function simply as organisms reacting to an environment and
nothing more, then man, being animal, has no more need of a soul than they
have. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in his "Essay on the Christian
System," said that the two fatal flaws of Christianity were (1) denying spirit
and mind to any other creatures but ourselves (which both fundamentalists and
Darwinists do) and (2) allowing life to no other world but our own. Adam in a
vacuum, all alone in the society of God's creatures and all alone in the
emptiness of space, the only thinking animal on the only inhabited spot in all
the emptiness of space! When it began to appear that the earth was only one
among countless possible earths and not the one-and-only center of everything,
the discovery was viewed by both sides as the fatal blow to the dignity of man
and the integrity of the Bible. This has always amazed me. Why on earth should
the idea of life on other worlds lead scientists like G. B. Kistiakowsky, D.
N. Michael, Harlow Shapley, Arnold Toynbee, and Otto Struve to assume as a
matter of course that such a situation renders God expendable and the Bible
unacceptable? Such a conclusion follows only from the all-or-nothing premises
of Alexandrian absolutism: the universe and truth and God could not be
otherwise by very definition than as the doctors of the fourth century
described them; any changes in the scenario would require scrapping the whole
thing, including God. It only shows, for Latter-day Saints, how "strongly
riveted [were] the `creeds of the fathers,' who have inherited lies, upon the
hearts of the children, and filled the world with confusion!" (D&C 123:7.)
Strongly riveted, indeed! Those preconceptions were the very thing that Joseph
and Brigham had the most difficulty in coping with among the Saints, who cling
to them to this day.
This futile quarrel should be no concern of ours. For one thing, we have
a story to tell before Adam. Religion and science have none, absolutely none.
For the churchmen, the whole universe comes into existence in the week
before Adam's own creation. But for the scientists, too, there is nothing to
tell before the history. They set the stage for human history, but until a man
with a book walks onto the stage there is no story, no play. Science studies
the properties and the sets for the play, but the set is the play. The medium
is the message. There is no more to follow. All around us in the universe,
things are just happening. If they didn't happen one way, they would happen
another. What difference does it make? The scientists of past decades have
been proud of the erhabene Zwecklosigkeit, the "majestic meaninglessness" of
it all. Since this is not to be my subject, one quotation, the classical
remark of Tyndal, will suffice: "In the purely natural and inevitable march of
evolution, life . . . is of profound unimportance, . . . a mere eddy in the
primeval slime." The wise men gloried in the strength of mind and character
that enabled them to look an utterly indifferent universe in the face without
flinching (after all, they had tenure), insisting that the rest of us rid
ourselves of our infantile longings for more. When we visit the planets and
their satellites today, what do we find? Nobody at home! Somewhere the side of
a cliff slips and slumps, somewhere dense clouds of dust are blown by
super-winds, somewhere gas or magma seeps through cracks in the ground or huge
blocks of ice collapse or collide, somewhere a meteor lands without a sound,
somewhere. What difference does it make? It is all, as some of my professors
used to remind their impressed but unhappy classes with malicious glee,
utterly meaningless. Mount St. Helens takes on interest only because we are
here. Globes on which nothing happens for millions of years are just as
interesting as those on which change is taking place all the time. The static
condition is in itself a happening, and with nobody around to measure the
time, one scenario moves as fast as another.
When science takes us to human prehistory, it is just more of the same.
Since World War II, an immense lot of digging has been done all over the
world, and the result is a great accumulation of properties, but still no
play. We learn from what is being turned up that people lived in shelters of
various kinds, ate food that they gathered or hunted, warmed themselves and
cooked with fire, wore clothing as they needed it, had pots to cook and store
food in, had children, drank water, breathed air, and so on. And that is the
whole story. The table is now set for the banquet, but no live guests ever
show up. We sit in the darkened theater waiting for the show that never
begins. It won't begin until we get a written record. Listen to the latest
word on the subject by one of the foremost prehistorians, A. J. Jelinek
(1977): "The overriding impression of the technological evidence in the
archaeological record is one of almost unimaginable monotony. . .. The most
overwhelming example . . . is. . . Olduvai Gorge where for approximately a
million years no significant innovation is discernable." Even the later
innovations "take place over hundreds of thousands of years; this means that
we are talking about tens of thousands of generations of hominids maintaining
patterns of technological traditions without discernable change. "
No Adam, no play. These can't be our people. Science promised an exciting
new world, a great show, to which H. G. Wells offered to conduct us, but it
all went stale in his own lifetime. To paraphrase the eminent biologist René
Dubos, existentialist nausea has found its home in the most affluent and
technologically advanced parts of the world. The most poignant problem of
modern life is probably man's feeling that life has lost its significance. The
view that the modern world is absurd is no longer limited to the philosophical
or literary avant-garde. It is spreading to all social and economic groups and
affects all manifestations of life.
I spend my days in the midst of noise, dirt, ugliness, and absurdity, in
order to have easier access to well- equipped laboratories, libraries,
museums, and a few sophisticated colleagues whose material existence is as
absurd as mine. I doubt that mankind can tolerate our absurd way of life much
longer without losing what is best inhumanness. It is religion that makes man
humble in the face of nature, Dubos infers, and science that makes him
arrogant, not the other way around ∙
The humanists have always known that they have no play. Euripides has a
little song to that effect, which he repeats no fewer than five times. What it
says is, in effect, "I know this play makes no sense, but neither does
anything else!" Shakespeare's last word on the subject in his last play, The
Tempest, was: "Our revels now are ended. These our actors . . . are melted
into air, into thin air: and, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the
cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe
itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this
insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind." (Act 4, scene 1, lines
148-56.) That's all there is. No one is going anywhere. Or take the highest
achievement of modern theater, a play that won the Nobel Prize, no less. The
characters in Waiting for Godot, writes an admiring critic, "have nothing to
say, nor have they anything to do. Language for them is a means for expressing
the meaninglessness of existence. . . . Godot is a symbol of hope that keeps
man waiting for something big to happen, but that never happens. On the whole,
all that man does centres round his physical needs and devices to kill time."
Now as to the past, when I first joined the army I was sent to weather
school and became a weatherman, working with the primitive charts and diagrams
of the day. Coordinating the information that came over the teletype from a
hundred other weather stations, I tried to report and predict the weather at
Godman Field, Kentucky. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I thought in those days, if
we had a movie that showed us all the moving storms and fronts. Then instead
of having to throw the models together with feverish haste to project the past
into future weather, I would only have to look at the moving picture and know
exactly what was going to happen tomorrow. Meteorologists can do that today.
It is all before our very eyes on the evening news. Seeing is believing. We
are going to be hit by a big one tomorrow (which turns out to be a beautiful
day), or that big clear spot shows perfectly heavenly weather ahead (so it
snows and sleets all day tomorrow). Now imagine that instead of a weather-eye,
enabling such brilliant predictions a few hours ahead, we had a satellite
picture showing the earth over millions of years. Every time we stop the
picture we ask the scientist what is going to happen next. And so he tells us
with great confidence. Can we trust him? We can check on the weather day by
day and make corrections and adjustments and keep score. But as Professor
Campbell, formerly of UCLA, reminds us, the paleontologist cannot do any of
that. He cannot observe processes but only results. He has no regular sequence
of pictures before his eyes but only a few badly blurred snapshots of the
earth over the last three million years. Studying these, the specialists try
to tell us just what happened. Am I willing to stake my eternal salvation on
their highly conflicting opinions? The little pictures are very few in number,
very far apart, and very badly damaged. Every authority today emphasizes that,
more than ever before. In the place of connections between the specimens, we
have only resemblances, and it is on them that we base our whole
story, classification, taxonomy, biosystematics, it is all a question of
endlessly debated definitions, not a whit different from the harangues of the
ancient Sophists. In the same breath, the experts today emphasize the scarcity
and bothersome overabundance of evidence, the paradox resulting from a sudden
accumulation of evidence during the past decade.
Upstairs in the old Education Building at Brigham Young University, there
stood for many years a tall, thin, glass showcase. On the top shelf was a
human skull; below it was the cast of a Cro-Magnon skull; then Neanderthal;
and so on until we got to a skull of a gorilla. Here before our very eyes was
an unimpeachable sermon on how man came to be. But things have changed now.
"As late as 1955," writes Professor B. G. Campbell, fossils "could be fitted
into a relatively simple and not very controversial phylogenetic lineage. The
numerous fossils now known offer alternative interpretations." Not so
compellingly simple as before, but how many alternative interpretations? "The
number of possible hypotheses are both theoretically and practically
unlimited. " J. J. Jerison wrote in 1975, "The simple picture of evolution
from an australopithecine to a habiline to a pithecanthropine to a sapient
grade is obviously inadequate." He added rather wistfully, almost
regretfully, "Things would actually fit together more easily if the dating of
the new specimen at 2.8 million years ago were in error." The equally eminent
D. Pilbeam comments on the same development: "Until a few years ago relatively
simple schemes that viewed past hominoids as foreshadows of living ones
functioned very well as organizing paradigms." Today, "classification of past
forms on the basis of present-day distinctions may not be very useful.
Interconnections among fossil species and between them and the present species
are increasingly difficult to draw. Concern with phylogeny. . . is perhaps on
the wane." "A great deal of heated debate has occurred over the past ten
years or so concerning hominid origins. The last decade has seen a number of
significant changes. . . . We are now in a period of uncertainty. This
contrasts with the preceding period, during which much seemed so clear-cut and
obvious."
The sensational new discoveries in Africa only remind the researchers how
much they have been missing and how much they're still missing. "Whence came
these late Neogene hominoids?" asks Professor Pilbeam of the Olduvai
population. The question remains unanswered because "our knowledge of the
fossil record is sparse, and heavily skewed toward representation of jaws and
teeth." And Professor Jelinek informs us that "the entire excavated area of
occupation surfaces (all over the world) is well under the size of a modern
football field." At Olduvai, 80 percent of the material comes from a band of
strata representing only 4 percent of the time-span of occupation. As opposed
to the certitudes that were the most characteristic, as well as the most
obnoxious, trait of past generations of the Darwinian ministry, Campbell
reminds us, "We know that we can never do more than present hypotheses on the
basis of the presently available evidence. As time-bound creatures, no
ultimate truth about the origin and evolution of mankind can ever be known to
us." "If nothing else," Professor Pilbeam concludes his study, "perhaps the
only thing that is certain is that the next decade will provide us many
surprises." If that is certain, we should in all conscience postpone any
further discussion or debate on such matters for at least another ten years. I
could have saved myself a lot of trouble by simply ignoring the experts for
thirty years. It is sad to think how many of those telling points that turned
some of our best students away from the gospel have turned out to be dead
wrong!
Now it is admitted, in the words of W. W. Howells, that all those years
when everybody was sure of the answers, "no scheme was presented that
intelligibly interpreted the fossil record." And now the interpretation is
far more difficult than ever, because there are just too many types to relate
and explain. It is a strange fact, "a paradoxical problem," as Pilbeam puts
it, that "the hominids are one of the poorest represented of fossil mammal
groups, relative to their apparent past diversity." An astonishing number of
different types are running around (there are seven at Olduvai), and yet so
very few specimens! What is wrong? It is no longer enough to fall back, as S.
Washburn does, on the old chestnut: "Surely as more fossils are found. . .
[his tool theory] will be found to have been a major factor." What kind of
science is that, basing our theories on evidence not yet discovered?
This is a reminder that those who study the origin of man begin with the
final answers. The ultimate questions that can only be answered after all the
returns are in are the very questions with which Lyell and Hutton and Darwin
began their explorations. Our thrilling detective drama begins by telling us
who did it and then expects us to wait around with bated breath while the
detective brings in the evidence. The premise is stated, for example, by G. G.
Simpson: "In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer need or
room for the supernatural. The earth was not created: it evolved. So did all
the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, . . . mind
and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion." Well, if we grant
that, we already have the answer to the big questions. We know the final
score. And as giving the plot away spoils the fun, so Simpson must go back to
the Bible whenever he wants to interest an audience.
Here it is important to bring to attention the great number of knowledge
banks that must be brought under contribution before we can get it all
together. There was a time when the Bible was the only knowledge bank. Some
fathers of the church, like Hilary, declared that anything not specifically
stated to have happened in the Bible could not possibly have happened
anywhere. When Aristotle's only knowledge bank became available, the doctors
of the church diligently accommodated the Bible to his teachings. With the
study of the heavens, the stars became the next great source of guidance to
the real nature of things. Then Bacon opened the book of nature. Next, geology
and biology called the tune. Geology took a direct look at the past, we had to
believe what it told us, while biology examined the active processes that
brought about the visible changes. On these two hung all the laws and the
prophets.
And why not? Where else could one turn for answers? It is an illusion to
look elsewhere, Freud explained in a famous essay, "The Future of an
Illusion," for what other science is there except science? Duly impressed, the
world failed to ask whether those data, no matter how concrete and precise,
were adequate for the immense burden of proof that was needed. The prestige of
science rested on shocking oversimplification and elaborate tautologies.
"Never mind the details," we were told. "We can fill them in later", which
means, as noted, that the great search for truth begins with the final
answers.
Darwin decided at the age of twenty that the Bible was a fraud. He
claimed he felt no distress and never doubted for a single second that his
conclusion was correct. In a disarming article, T. Dobzhansky admits that his
own beliefs are based on anything but exhaustive evidence and that others with
competent knowledge of that evidence do not agree with his conclusions. In
other words, his model doesn't work, but that is no reason for rejecting it or
looking for another model. After all, it is scientific. He has put a great
deal of time and study into it. It is based on known facts and sound
reasoning. Why should he give it up for gross superstition, mysticism, and
ignorant religious ranting? There's always the assumption that there is no
other alternative to my science but your anti-science. Your knowledge bank
does not count if it obfuscates mine. As usual, Dobzhansky rests his case on
discoveries yet to be made: "Guessing where new discoveries are likely to be
made is a risky venture in science. And yet, a scientist is constantly forced
to take this risk." True, and for that very reason, as Karl Popper reminds
us, a scientist can never be dogmatic. But Dobzhansky is nothing but dogmatic.
Well, again, why not? Here were the sciences which in time would give us all
the answers. We are quite sure of that, so why not accept their conclusions
now? That is just what the public has done, and the results have been
paralyzing. The Darwinian Sleep has done much more damage than the Newtonian
Sleep, a dullness of mind that cripples curiosity with the authority of the
Approved School Solution.
The two big questions today, Dobzhansky says, are (1) the mechanisms of
evolution, the very question that Darwin was supposed to have answered for all
time, and (2) "the biological uniqueness of man," which is the real Adam
question. How do you define man? How do you define Adam? There were a lot of
creatures running about long ago who looked like men, but for that matter
there are a lot of them today; you can go to Hogle Zoo [in Salt Lake City,
Utah] and see some of them, but they are not men. Are these zoo critters
ancestral to us? No, for they are contemporary. And what about the other
creatures who disappeared long ago? Are they ancestral to us? That is just the
question, and there is no agreement on it. Since World War I, homo erectus has
been found all over the Old World, the term including a number of prehistoric
types. "Where did Homo Erectus come from?" asks W. W. Howells. "Where did he
go? The paths are simply untraced. Above all, the nature of the line leading
to living man remains a matter of pure theory." In September 1979, 150 of the
world's leading paleontologists met at the Eighth Pan-African Congress of
Prehistory and Quaternary Studies in Nairobi. The main issue discussed was,
"What is the definition of Homo?" How do you know a true man when you see
him? Well, he looks like a man. Again, there are creatures in the zoo that
look like men. "In recent years the old concept of a single, steadily evolving
lineage from ape to man has been completely replaced by at least three and
possibly more different forms of early man evolving simultaneously in Africa."
By two million years ago "at least two forms of hominids were living," and one
of them "died out perhaps a million years ago." And the other? It was no more
manlike than many of the others. What evidence have we that it did not also
die out? Pilbeam writes that three hundred individuals found in East Africa
represent at least seven hominid species. He also notes, "These species do not
resemble any of the living Old World higher primates." In fact, they seem to
have been in many ways distinctly different from all later hominids. The
tool-using Dryopithecids "disappear around 8 or 9 m[illion] y[ears] ago"; the
Rampithecidae about 8 million years ago. Campbell thinks they were related to
us "on a personal assessment of very complex and conflicting evidence," but he
concedes that Leakey and Napier and others do not think Anthropus africanus
was ancestral to H. habilis.
A contemporary theory of great importance is that evolution has been
directed and boosted through the ages as various homonid species have
fortuitously adopted tools. After the initial innovation, the use of a
particular tool could go on by simple imitation, yet Washburn claims that
tools have made us what we are. He tells us that the famous chopper tool
"remained in day-to-day use as a major element in the human tool kit for about
two million years." One would think that 2 million years without a change
would show quite remarkable immunity in these creatures to any didactic
influence of the coup de poing, Faustkeil, or hand-ax. Perhaps the nature of
the instrument itself is to blame. In 1964, President Barnes, of the American
School in Beirut, gave me what is perhaps the first Mousterian artifact ever
recognized in Palestine, an excellent example of an Acheulean point,
discovered by Fredrick Bliss, the founder of the University, at Buri-el Khadr.
What puzzles me is what it could have been used for, for it was of marly
chert, and I doubt if it could cut cheese. When I dropped it from a height of
about nine inches on the tile floor, the top of the point broke off with the
greatest of ease. So I was not surprised to read recently that while "there is
virtually no evidence of nonlithic tools" for our pre-Adamites, and that these
hand-axes are "the hallmark of most Middle Pleistocene cultures, prehistorians
are still without firm evidence relating to the function of these first
recognized and most elaborate of Lower Paleolithic stone tools." Hundreds and
thousands of them, the standard all-purpose tool of 2 million years of
diligent use-but what on earth were they used for? Yet Washburn assures us
that thanks to such tools alone "the human way and the brain evolved together
to produce ancient man of the genus Homo about half a million years ago. Then
the brain evolved under the pressure of more complex social life until the
species Homo sapiens appeared perhaps as recently as 50,000 years ago."
Fortuitously discovered tools vigorously pushed man toward his full-blown
glory, and yet 2 million years of that exhilarating process left not the
slightest effect on their users. Just how powerful is the influence of the
gadgets?
"Considerable academic debate surrounds the date for the appearance of
modern man," Washburn tells us. "By 35,000 years ago, however, the hunting
populations of western Europe were biologically indistinguishable from modern
man. " Yet he also tells us that "man began when populations of apes, about a
million years ago, started the bipedal, tool-using way of life." In the same
volume of essays, H. de Lumley reports on the 350,000-year-old village of
Terra Amata, with its well-made huts, central heating (a hearth), and a
special compartment for tool-making, the oldest known man-made structures.
What kind of men? R. G. Klein tells us that "modern man (Homo sapiens) seems
to have made his first appearance between 45,000 and 35,000 years ago," and
then goes on to describe one of some 100 Pleistocene sites in the Ukraine
between 80,000 and 75,000 years old, where the people wore furs and beaded
garments, buried their dead, and built substantial heated huts. The artifacts
were Mousterian and, to quote the same scientist, "Mousterian artifacts
invariably belong to Neanderthal man." But didn't Neanderthal man become
extinct? Some say he did, some say he didn't. Which is it to be, 2 million
years, 1 million years, half a million years, 50,000 years, or 35,000 years?
Each one introduces a new species, though all of them used tools.
According to Klein, when "true sapiens" appears, it is with a sudden
"quantum advance in human culture evolution." By definition evolution comes
only by minute and gradual steps, a quantum advance must be something else. T.
Dobzhansky, who lays particular emphasis on the tiny steps of micro-evolution,
explains the anomaly by noting that culture brings an entirely new element
into the picture: "The cultural evolution of mankind is superimposed on its
biological evolution; the causes of the former are non-biological." But once
caused, he insists, they contribute to biological changes by natural
selection. "Genes determine the possibility of culture but not its content,
just as they determine the possibility of human speech but not what is
spoken." Whatever is behind it, it is the culture that marks the appearance
of man as such, just as by very definition it is the written record that
begins his history.
When about twenty years ago it was decided that man himself is the chief
conditioner of his evolution, scientists began to view him as outside and
independent of the mainstream of organic evolution. Here was a new dimension,
an evolution that no longer operated on blind chance. To define true man is to
discover the uniqueness of man, that which he does not share with any other
creature. It can only be his culture. And when do you get a real culture? Not
until you get Adam. Those 100,000-year-old villages have nothing to tell us
that we do not know. It is time we got to Adam.
To recapitulate, religion has no plot. Science has no plot. This means
that Joseph Smith is the only entry. He, at least, has given us a picture. But
is it a convincing picture? The fact is, we have never looked at it closely!
We have drawn back from that assignment, preferring to save a lot of trouble
and take sides with the traditional schools.
The stories of the garden of Eden and the Flood have always furnished
unbelievers with their best ammunition against believers, because they are the
easiest to visualize, popularize, and satirize of any Bible accounts. Everyone
has seen a garden and been caught in a pouring rain. It requires no effort of
imagination for a six-year-old to convert concise and straightforward
Sunday-school recitals into the vivid images that will stay with him for the
rest of his life. These stories retain the form of the nursery tales they
assume in the imaginations of small children, to be defended by grownups who
refuse to distinguish between childlike faith and thinking as a child when it
is time to "put away childish things." (1 Corinthians 13:11.) It is equally
easy and deceptive to fall into adolescent disillusionment and with one's
emancipated teachers to smile tolerantly at the simple gullibility of bygone
days, while passing stern moral judgment on the savage old God who damns Adam
for eating the fruit he put in his way and, overreacting with impetuous
violence, wipes out Noah's neighbors simply for making fun of his
boat-building on a fine summer's day.
This is another case of what I have called the gentile dilemma or, if you
will, the devil's dilemma.
Joseph Smith gave the world something that nobody else could. That is why
I say that Joseph Smith, with nothing going for him and everything going
against him, simply could not lose. He told us what the play is all about. If
you can come up with a better story than his, more power to you, but up until
now no one else has had any story at all to place before us. If only for that
reason, I believe, the Prophet's story deserves a hearing.
The Latter-day Saints have four basic Adam stories, those found in the
Bible, the book of Moses, the book of Abraham, and the temple, each seen from
a different angle, like the four Gospels, but not conflicting if each is put
into its proper context. And what is that context? One vitally important
principle that everyone seems to have ignored until now is the consideration
that everything is presented to us in these accounts through the eyes, or from
the point of view of, the individual observers who tell the story. Historians
long ago came to realize that the boast of German Geschichtswissenschaft, to
report what happened at all times "wie es eigentlich geschah," the whole
truth, the complete event in holistic perfection as it would be seen by the
eye of God, is a philosopher's pipe dream. And, indeed, it is from the
philosophers that we got it, rooted as the fathers and the doctors are in the
sublime absolutes of Alexandria: There is God and God only, and his holy and
infallible book was written by his very finger, untouched by the human mind.
We must credit the Moslems with carrying this doctrine all the way. Not only
is it the crime of Shirk to credit the existence of anything besides God, but
his book is as divine and ineffable as he is. I have been told that it is
presumptuous for mortals, let alone infidels, to pretend to understand
anything in it.
The Latter-day Saints, inheritors of the Christian version of this
teaching, are constantly converting statements of limited application to
universal or at least sweeping generalities. To illustrate, I was told as a
child that the Rocky Mountains, the Appalachians, and the Andes all came into
existence overnight during the great upheavals of nature that took place at
the time of the Crucifixion, an absurdity that plays into the hands of critics
of the Book of Mormon. But what we find in the 3 Nephi account when we read it
carefully is a few sober, factual, eyewitness reports describing an earthquake
of 8-plus on the Richter scale in a very limited area. Things that appear
unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make
perfectly good sense from another. The Nautical Almanac gives the exact time
of sunrise and sunset for every day of the year, yet astronauts know that the
sun neither rises nor sets except from a particular point of view, the time of
the event being strictly dependent on the exact location. From that point of
view and that only, it is strictly correct and scientific to say that the sun
does rise and set. Just so, the apparently strange and extravagant phenomena
described in the scriptures are often correct descriptions of what would have
appeared to a person in a particular situation. You and I have never been in
those situations. To describe what he sees to people who have never seen
anything like it, the writer must reach for metaphors and similes: "His eyes
were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; .
. . his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters." (D&C 110:3;
italics added.) There was no fire, no snow, no rushing waters, but that is as
near as Joseph Smith and Sidney Ridgon could come to telling us what they
experienced when "the veil was taken from [their] minds, and the eyes of
[their] understanding were opened!" (D&C 110:1.) They were reporting as well
as they could what they had seen from a vantage point on which we have never
stood.
A recent study points out that the charge that Abraham's story in the
Bible must be fictitious because no one could know the highly intimate things
reported there, nobody, Hamming admits, unless it were Abraham himself. The
earliest Abraham books are supposed to be autobiographies, and the story told
from his point of view makes perfectly good sense. So with Noah in the ark.
From where he was, "the whole earth" (Genesis 8:9) was covered with water as
far as he could see; after things had quieted down for 150 days and the ark
ground to a halt, it was still three months before he could see any
mountaintops. But what were conditions in other parts of the world? If Noah
knew that, he would not have sent forth messenger birds to explore. The flood
as he described it is what he saw of it. "He sent forth a dove from him, to
see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground." (Genesis 8:8.)
Couldn't he see for himself? Not where the dove went. It was not until seven
days later that he sent it out again; and after flying all day, the bird came
back with a green leaf fetched from afar; "so Noah knew that the waters were
abated from off the earth." (Genesis 8:11.) Still he waited another seven
days. When the dove did not return, Noah had his answer. In some distant
place, trees were bearing and there was bird-food to be found. But not where
Noah was. All that time he had not dared to open up.
Note that the author does not fall into the literary trap of telling
where the birds went and what they saw. That became a standard theme of early
Oriental literature, faithfully reflected in the classical stories of the
sea-eagle and the hoopoe. All Noah tells us is what he saw of the birds and
the flood. The rain continued at least in spots, for there was that
magnificent rainbow. Why do Christians insist on calling it the first rainbow,
just because it is the first mentioned? Who says that water drops did not
refract light until that day? Well, my old Sunday School teacher, for one,
used to say it. The rainbow, like the sunrise, is strictly the product of a
point of view, for which the beholder must stand in a particular place while
it is raining in another particular place and the sun is in a third particular
place, if he is to see it at all. It is a lesson in relativity.
This principle is recognized today as "the anthropic cosmological
principle." I refer you to the April 1980 Scientific American. It specifies
that what an observer is able to see of the universe actually makes a
difference in the real nature of that universe: "Man's experience is a
constraint on the kinds of universe he could observe. Many features of the
universe that are remarkable to ponder are inevitable prerequisites of the
existence of observers. " Though the authors say it is a mystery why this
should be so, still "the principle overcomes the traditional barrier between
the observer and the observed. It makes the observer an indispensable part of
the macrophysical world."
Nowhere is the principle of this relativity more clearly proclaimed than
in the cosmologies of the book of Moses and the book of Abraham. Both epics
begin in realms above, far from the earth (which has not yet come into
existence). At each step it is made perfectly clear who is speaking and from
what vantage point. "I dwell in the midst of them all; . . . I came down in
the beginning in the midst of all the intelligences thou hast seen." (Abraham
3:21; italics added.) First, second, and third persons appear in a large cast
of characters leaving one place for another. "We will go down, for there is
space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth
whereon these may dwell." (Abraham 3:24; italics added.) What a world of
inference opens up as we are launched into the mighty drama! Yet we
immediately begin to feel ourselves into the situation. Those to whom the
speaker refers (and there is no doubt who he is!) are known to Abraham from
aforetime, they are "all the intelligences thine eyes have seen from the
beginning." (Abraham 3:21; italics added.)
Before being introduced to his home planet, Abraham is given a view of
the cosmos, in the which he is reminded again and again that all distances,
directions, and motions are to be measured with respect to his own position
only. From another position, the picture might well look very different.
Kolob, as we noted, is not the center of the universe but governs only
one class of stars: "I have set this one to govern all those which belong to
the same order as that upon which thou standest." (Abraham 3:3; italics
added.) In the apocryphal Abraham literature, which has very recently and very
suddenly taken on extreme importance in the eyes of the learned world, this
point of vantage is a place in the heavens to which Abraham has been taken.
There he is at first terrified because he finds no place on which to stand,
until the angel who is with him gives him a correct orientation by drawing a
round diagram of things. This is reflected in Facsimile No. 2 of the Book of
Abraham, but we cannot discuss that here.
Time also is not reckoned in absolutes but is limited to Abraham's
system; "the reckoning of the Lord's time" is not reckoned absolutely but
"according to the reckoning of Kolob", an in-between element to gear Abraham's
time to a larger but not necessarily the largest system. There is also
reckoning by sun and moon, relative to "the earth upon which thou standest."
(Abraham 3:4-5.)
In verse 6 the expression "set time" is used four times, reminding us
that there is more than one frame of time reference. One must in the "times of
reckoning" take into account that "two facts" can exist, the one not excluding
the other. This is one of the mysteries of cosmology today. The Doctrine and
Covenants explains it by the necessity of limiting all "existence" to closed
systems, for "otherwise there is no existence." (D&C 93:30.)
Kolob's influence and time governs "all those planets which belong to the
same order as that upon which thou standest", the expression here used for the
seventh time. (Abraham 3:9; italics added.)
After being apprised, like Moses, of the endless nature of God's
works, "I could not see the end thereof", Abraham is reminded of the glory
elsewhere "before the world was." (Abraham 3:22.) Then, at the beginning of
chapter 4, we see a delegation going "down" to organize this earth and its
heaven. To begin with, we see bare rock, "empty and desolate," as the other
planets and satellites of the system seem to be today, "because they had not
formed anything but the earth." (Abraham 4:2.) Then the whole thing is
water-covered beneath a dense envelope of cloud, "darkness reigned upon the
face of the deep." But things were already being prepared for what was to
follow, for "the Spirit of the Gods was brooding upon the face of the waters."
Dictionaries define brooding as "to sit or incubate (eggs) for the purpose of
hatching." As Milton puts it, "dovelike sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss and
mad'st it pregnant." Also, "to dwell continuously on a subject." Brooding is
just the right word, a quite long quiet period of preparation in which
apparently nothing was happening. Something was to come out of the water,
incubating, waiting, a long, long time.
Next, in verse 3, "there was light." Where? It is an exercise in point of
view again. All this time the Gods had been dwelling in light and glory, but
the earth was dark. It was to where "darkness reigned," according to our text,
that the light came. (Abraham 4:2.) This was not the first creation of light.
Wherever light comes into darkness, "there is light."
The next verse reminds us that light itself is relative, a part of the
energy spectrum seen by some being with the capacity to be aware of it: "They.
. . comprehended the light, for it was bright" (Abraham 4:4), that is,
visible. Basic chemicals react to light, but are they aware of it, do they
comprehend it? In verse 5 we are introduced to the dualism of night and day,
land and water, which is peculiar to the earth and conditions of all life upon
it.
The creation process as described in the Pearl of Great Price is open
ended and ongoing, entailing careful planning based on vast experience, long
consultations, models, tests, and even trial runs for a complicated system
requiring a vast scale of participation by the creatures concerned. The whole
operation is dominated by the overriding principle of love. You may accept the
Big Bang, with its potential for producing all that came thereafter, but by
any reckoning the earth was definitely not among the instantaneous productions
of the first millisecond or even of the first fifteen minutes. No matter how
you figure, it came along much, much later after a great deal had happened.
"Worlds without number" had already come into existence and gone their ways:
"And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall
another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words." (Moses
1:38.)
Consider how it was done: "And the Gods said: We will do everything that
we have said, and organize them." (Abraham 4:31.) "And the Gods saw that they
would be obeyed, and that their plan was good." (Abraham 4:21.) "We will end
our work, which we have counseled. . . . And thus were their decisions at the
time that they counseled among themselves to form the heavens and the earth."
(Abraham 5:2-3.) After the talk they got down to work. "The Gods came down and
formed these the generations of the heavens and of the earth, . . . according
to all that which they had said. . . before." (Abraham 5:4-5.) They worked
through agents: "The Gods ordered, saying: Let [such-and-such happen] . . . ;
and it was so, even as they ordered." (Abraham 4:9,11.)
What they ordered was not the completed product, but the process to bring
it about, providing a scheme under which life might expand: "Let us prepare
the earth to bring forth grass" (Abraham 4:11; italics added), not "Let us
create grass."
"Let us prepare the waters to bring forth abundantly. . . . And the Gods
prepared the waters that they might bring forth great whales, and every living
creature that moveth." (Abraham 4:20.) Note the future tense: the waters are
so treated that they will have the capacity. The Gods did not make whales on
the spot but arranged it so that in time they might appear. They created the
potential. "And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan
was good" (Abraham 4:21), that is, it was working, not because they were doing
it all themselves, there were other agents at work: they were being obeyed. By
whom? Well, the land animals, we are told, which "would obey." (Abraham 4:25.)
"And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed."
(Abraham 4:18.)
"They obeyed" is the active voice, introducing a teaching that, in my
opinion, is by far the most significant and distinct aspect of Mormonism. It
is the principle of maximum participation, of the active cooperation of all of
God's creatures in the working out of his plans, which, in fact, are devised
for their benefit: "This is my work and my glory." (Moses 1:39.) Everybody
gets into the act. Every creature, to the limit of its competence, is given
the supreme compliment of being left on its own, so that the word "obey" is
correctly applied. "We will go down, for there is space there, and we will
take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell."
(Abraham 3:24.) Why? "And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do
all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them." (Abraham 3:25.)
What he commands is what will best fulfill the measure of their existence, but
they are not forced to do it-they are not automata. Adam was advised not to
eat the fruit but was told at the same time that he was permitted to do it. It
was up to him whether he would obey or not. If he did obey, he would qualify
for a higher trust.
Abraham 4:11-12 continues: "Let us prepare the earth to bring forth
grass. . . . And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth grass from its
own seed, . . . yielding fruit [the fruit is the seed], whose seed could only
bring forth the same. . . after his kind; and the Gods saw that they were
obeyed." Here are levels of independence down to a complete programming by
which the "seed could only bring forth the same." It reminds us of DNA, but
nothing is completely automatic, for the Gods watched those things which they
had ordered "until they obeyed," that is, until they could be trusted to carry
on their own. This is not Deism, the prearranged harmony of Leibniz, for the
Gods keep up an active interest in the operation in which indeed things often
go awry: "We shall go away now," they say, "but we shall visit you again,"
which they do from time to time, keeping up an active interest. The most
important provision of all is, "We will bless them," and "cause them to be
fruitful and multiply." (Abraham 4:28.) That blessing of everything makes all
the difference. The Darwinists might say, "You people are simply describing a
natural process in humanized terms," for they have always made much of the
completely natural, inevitable, mindless, undirected, spontaneous, mechanical
aspect of natural selection necessary for its operation as a purely and
completely physical law. They ever gloated on the unfeeling cruelty of the
whole thing, "nature red in tooth and claw," as Kipling put it. The blessing
is the whole difference between a play and no play.
After the earth is set up we are shown everything from Adam's point of
view. In Genesis 2:5, we are definitely referred to a pre-temporal creation,
then (2:8) we see a garden planted, and (2:15) a man put into the garden,
where he is wonderfully at home. He can eat of every tree in the garden
(2:16). He lives on terms of greatest intimacy with other creatures, naming
and classifying them as he takes his place among them, in the manner of Claude
Levi-Strauss's "primitives." (Genesis 2:19-20.) When Adam eats the fruit his
eyes are opened, he is a piqqeah, one who sees things as they were not seen
before, who sees things which he in another condition could not see. He is in
a new ambience. Cast out of the garden, he finds himself in a dry climate and
changes his diet from fruit to grains, which he must work hard to cultivate.
The book of Abraham is more specific. After the great cycles of creation
come the smaller cycles, starting with a very dry planet followed by a very
wet phase. (Abraham 5:5-6.) Man is formed of the elements of the earth like
any other creature, and he lives in a very lush period, a garden, which is
however reduced to an oasis in an encroaching desert. (Abraham 5:7-10.) To
this limited terrain he is perfectly adapted. It is a paradise. How long does
he live there? No one knows, for this was still "after the Lord's time," not
ours. (Abraham 5:13.) It was only when he was forced out of this timeless,
changeless paradise that he began to count the hours and days, moving into a
hard semi-arid world of thorns, thistles, and briars, where he had to toil and
sweat in the heat just to stay alive and lost his old intimacy with the
animals. (Genesis 3:17-19.)
The questions most commonly asked are: When did it happen? How long did
it take? Our texts make it very clear that we are not to measure the time and
periods involved by our chronometers and calendars. Until Adam underwent that
fatal change of habitat, body chemistry, diet, and psyche that went with the
Fall, nothing is to be measured in our years, "for. . . the Gods had not
appointed unto Adam his reckoning." (Abraham 5:13.) Until then, time is
measured from their point of view, not ours. As far as we are concerned it can
be any time, and there would be no point to insisting on this again and again
if all we had to do to convert their time to our time was multiply our years
by 365,000. Theirs was a different time. The only numbers we are given
designated the phases of periods of creation: "and this was the second time"
(Abraham 4:8), "and it was the third time" (4:13), and so on. The periods are
numbered but never measured. The Gods called them "days," but the text is at
great pains to make clear that it was day and night from their point of view,
when our time had not yet been appointed. "And the Gods called the light Day,
and the darkness they called Night. And. . . from the evening until morning
they called night; . . . and this was the first, or the beginning, of that
which they called day and night." (Abraham 4:5.) Doctrine and Covenants
130:4-5 explains that "the reckoning of God's time, angel's time, prophet's
time, and man's time [is] according to the planet on which they reside." That
implies different time schemes at least. In moving from one system to another
one also changes one's timing. "There are no angels who minister to this earth
but those who do belong or have belonged to it." (D&C 130:5.)
"It was from morning until evening that they called day; and it was the
fifth time." (Abraham 4:23.) How long is such a time? In the "fourth time," we
read, "the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they
obeyed." (Abraham 4:19,18.) That important word "until" tells us two things:
(1) that they took all the time that was necessary, no matter how long it
might have been, measuring the period in terms not of a terminal date but in
terms of the requirements of the task; (2) "until" means up till a certain
time, but not thereafter. When things were running smoothly, they were left on
their own, which implies a shift from one time-scale to another. When, for
example, "the Gods prepared the earth to bring forth" (Abraham 4:24), after
they had prepared the waters to do the same long before, how long do you think
that took? Again, the record is deliberately vague.
The relative times are clearly shown when "the Gods organized the lights
in the expanse of the heaven." From our position that is just what they
are, lights, nothing more. "And caused them to divide the day from the
night"..... Such a division had already taken place at the beginning, but this
was a new time-system for this earth. . . . "And organized them to be for
signs and for seasons, and for days and for years." (Abraham 4:14.) A sign is
a symbol, a mark, an arbitrary indicator, a means of measuring. It is only a
sign relative to a particular observer. These lights were not originally
created as markers of time, but they could be used as such, they could be
"organized for" such. The moon was not created for my convenience; but just
the same, from where I stand it can be made to serve a number of special
purposes. Aside from measuring time, those heavenly bodies do "give light upon
the earth. . . , the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to
rule the night; with the lesser light they set the stars also." (Abraham
4:15-16.)
Here we get what is perhaps the most striking instance of "anthrocentric
cosmology." An astronomer (I think at Notre Dame) recently calculated the
probability of a planet in the solar system having a moon (just one moon, at
that) that subtended exactly the same arc in the sky as does the sun from the
surface of the same planet. The chances are astronomically remote, so remote,
indeed, that there seems to be something deliberate about what is otherwise a
stunning coincidence. From no other point of view in all the universe will the
sun and the moon have exactly the same size. It is also arranged that the
stars come out with the moon, though the ancients knew perfectly well that
they were there in the daytime too; yet for us, again, from our point of view
only, they are simply not there. The North Star does not really stand still
while the other stars circle around it (move away from the earth and all your
calculations will be spoiled). Hence the repeated insistence on specifying,
according to the time appointed as that "upon which thou standest." (Abraham
3:3.)
What the book of Abraham shows me is that we are in the midst of
eternity, surrounded by evidence of the fact. Every morning on the way to
work, I behold those very old rocks at the base of Rock Canyon and think how
everywhere around us in space float masses of rock like that, that never,
never want to change and really never need to. What does a million years mean
to them? For that matter, what does ten minutes? If they were blasted
tomorrow, reduced to powder or vapor, nothing would be lost. That is the First
Law: The stuff is there. In whatever form it may take, it is always all there.
That is the first point scored by the book of Abraham, the first great
mystery. Don't ask why it is there. Nobody can tell you. In 1951, the Pope
officially declared for the Big Bang theory, because it looked to some like a
creatio ex nihilo. Actually, it is just the opposite: the Big Bang took place
precisely because all that the universe contains was already compressed within
that primal singularity so tightly that it had to explode. It was all there,
always. So we begin with an imponderable given quantity: "See, yonder is
matter unorganized," or as the Book of Abraham puts it, "We will go down, for
there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an
earth whereon these may dwell." (Abraham 3:24.)
Mystery No. 2: Why should it be so organized? Its natural state calls for
progressive disorganization, the Second Law. But organizing is the exact
reversal of that law. Whose idea was it to build this elaborate organization,
which we can see for ourselves exists, however contrary to natural law? Many
scientists are puzzling over that just now. Trust the book of Abraham to
anticipate such problems; this sort of thing has been going on for a long,
long time. It is planned, programmed, and tested. The "anthropic cosmological
principle" recognized that the state of organization depends on the observer.
He reads order into the chaos. We may be looking at total chaos or at nothing,
but to us it makes sense. Not just to me but to us. If it were only to me it
could be an illusion, so we check with each other. Many find the whole thing
absurd. Eminent scientists tell us that we are living in an absurd world. But
that only means that we know that it should be different. When I say it is
absurd, I am complaining that what I see is "not the way it really is." And
who are we? Abraham sees that as the ultimate question and meets it handily:
intelligence, awareness, is the beginning and ending of it all. You start out
with "intelligences," beyond which nothing is to be said. You can doubt
everything else, but that much you must grant, there were those intelligences,
because they still are. What the book of Abraham tells me is that, if this
moment of consciousness is real, then it is all real. I can bear unshakable
testimony to one thing: I am here. I am under no obligation to explain it or
prove it before it can be believed.
Let us consider our Adam. What kind of being is he? The same kind as
ourselves, but what is that? He plays a surprising number of roles, each with
a different persona, a different name, a different environment, a different
office and calling: (1) he was a member of the presidency when the earth
project was being discussed; (2) he was on the committee of inspection that
came down from time to time to check up on the operation; (3) then he changed
his name and nature to live upon the earth, but it was a very different earth
from any we know; it had to be a garden place specially prepared for him. (4)
When he left that paradise, he changed his nature again and for the first time
began to reckon the passing of time by our measurements, becoming a
short-lived creature subject to death. (5) In this condition, he began to
receive instructions from heavenly mentors on how to go about changing his
condition and status, entering into a covenant that completely changed his
mentality and way of life. "The first man Adam was made a living soul; the
last Adam was made a quickening spirit," when "that which is natural" became
spiritual. (1 Corinthians 15:45- 46.) The man Adam passes from one state of
being to another, and so do we: "as we have borne the image of the earthly, we
shall also bear the image of the heavenly." (1 Corinthians 15:49.) (6) In time
he died and became a spirit being, the head of all his spirit children in the
waiting-place, according to common Christian tradition as well as our own. (7)
Then he became, after Christ, the firstfruits of the resurrection and returned
triumphantly to his first and second estates (8) to go on to glory and eternal
lives.
In these seven or eight Adams, we have another fundamental teaching that
sets Mormonism off from all contemporary religion and science. The one views
man's life on earth as a one-act drama: Adam fell, Christ redeemed us, and
that is the story. Before Adam, there was nothing. Science tells us that the
drama is pointless, because there is really nothing after it. We, on the other
hand, see an ongoing epic of many episodes, each one a play in itself, a
dispensation.
The fifth chapter of Genesis begins with a very important episode, the
formal establishment of Adam's family organization. It begins with a book, a
book of remembrance or genealogy, entitled "The Book of the Generations of
Adam." It begins, "In the day the Gods set apart [bara, we are being very
literal here] Adam in the likeness of the Gods [bi-dmuth elohim] he made him.
Male and female he set them apart, and gave them a blessing, and gave them
their names as Adam, in the day he set them apart." (See Genesis 5:1-3.) Next
comes Seth in the proper line of Adam, and the patriarchal line follows. The
preceding chapter tells of the division into Cainites and Sethites, and it is
significant that the line of Cain is omitted from the genealogy of Adam. The
book of Moses tells of multitudes of Adam's children born before Cain and Abel
(Moses 5:12, 16). They had followed Satan by choice and were disqualified as
sons of God. We read in Moses: "And unto thy brethren have I. . . given
commandment, that they. . . should choose me, their Father. . . . But behold,
their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their
father." (Moses 7:33,37.) Those who accepted the covenant were called sons of
God and also the sons of Adam: "And this is the genealogy of the sons of Adam,
who was the son of God." (Moses 6:22.) Only those qualify as Bene-Adam who are
still in the covenant. Bene-Adam, however, is the normal Jewish word for human
beings. The Septuagint considers Adam a proper noun from Genesis 2:16 on; the
Vulgate from 2:19 on; Adam appears for the first time as a proper noun in the
standard Hebrew Bible only after Genesis 4:25. In that text twenty-two of the
twenty-seven occurrences of the name are accompanied by the article: "the
man." They are not proper names. In Genesis, E. Lussier concludes that Adam
has four senses:
1. "Man," a particular man, the first man (sixteen times).
2. The first husband (nine times).
3. Generic, "mankind" (two times).
4. As a proper name, once!
So we might well ask: What about those people who lived before Cain and
Abel? What about those who disappeared from sight? What about those who were
not even warned of the Flood? What about those many, many who visited the
earth as resurrected beings? What about the Watchers? What about the sons of
God who should not marry the daughters of men, and vice versa? And what about
the giants they begot when they did marry? What about the comings and goings
of Enoch's day between the worlds? What about his own status as "a wild man, .
. . a strange thing in the land"? (Moses 6:38.) Who were his people, living in
a distant land of righteousness, who never appear on the scene? What about the
Three Nephites, whose condition so puzzles Moroni, until he is told that they
are neither mortal nor immortal? (Mormon 8:10-11.) What about the creatures we
do not see around us? What about the Cainites? What about the nations among
whom Noah will have surviving progeny?
Speaking of Noah, God promised Enoch "that he [God] would call upon the
children of Noah; and he sent forth an unalterable decree, that a remnant of
his seed [Enoch's through Noah] should always be found among all nations,
while the earth should stand; and the Lord said: Blessed is he through whose
seed Messiah shall come." (Moses 7:51- 53.) Methuselah boasted about his line
as something special. (Moses 8:2-3.) Why special if it included the whole
human race? These blessings have no meaning if all the people of the earth and
all the nations are the seed of Noah and Enoch. What other line could the
Messiah come through? Well, there were humans who were not invited by Enoch's
preaching, not included among the residue of people not entering Enoch's city.
They were "the residue of the people which were the sons of Adam; and they
were a mixture of all the seed of Adam save it was the seed of Cain, for the
seed of Cain. . . had not place among them." (Moses 7:32.)
One thing we should understand is that the image of the pre-hominid is
not a discovery of modern science any more than the idea of evolution is.
Primitive man is the easiest thing in the world to imagine. Just look at your
neighbor. The Greeks were fascinated with him, and so were the Middle Ages.
Albrecht Altdorfer's painting "Der Wilde Mann," done in the early sixteenth
century, showing a real ape-man at home with his family, is as good as
anything H. F. Osborne ever turned out. Albrecht Durer also was intrigued by
the subject. Herbert Spencer had only to lean back in his armchair to turn out
the First Principles. I have never found students the least hesitant to write
papers on "A Day in the Life of Primitive Man." They know all about it. They
don't have to look up a thing.
This is a natural product of the silliest doctrine of all, that of
cultural evolution. Taking one's own, contemporary civilization as the very
latest civilization (which it is) and therefore the best (which it is not), it
is the easiest thing in the world to classify all other civilizations on a
scale of proximity to your own in time and spirit. Chrétien de Troyes in the
twelfth century begins his famous work with such a classification. This is
just as sound and scientific as textbooks on cultural anthropology used for
years.
But is it logical to begin at the top, as our Adam does? The Adam
tradition has it that Adam was the best and greatest, the most perfect of all
men. Isn't that getting the normal process of things backwards? Not at all, in
some things. If you want to found a university, do you begin by gathering a
colony of very stupid and ignorant people and wait for it to evolve into an
increasingly glorious institution? Does a university evolve? It accumulates
books and buildings and staff; and if size is what makes a university, then we
do indeed progress. But as often as not the big problem is to keep it from
deteriorating!
So it is with Adam. Must modern man be an improvement on him? Such is
that absurd doctrine of cultural evolution with which the schools have been
saddled for a century. I well remember my old music teacher, Mr. Seyler,
shaking his head with wonder at how Mozart could possibly have written such
wonderful music two hundred years ago!
Those soporific words "gradually" and "step by step," repeated
incessantly, are aimed at covering an ignorance that is both vast and
surprising. One is lulled, overwhelmed, and stupefied by the gradualness of it
all, which is at best a platitude, only good for pacifying the mind. The lazy
word "evolution" has blinded us to the real complexities of the past. It
raises an appalling number of questions to which we have no answer. Our
ignorance not only remained vast, but became pretentious as well.
Are we superior to the ancients? "If man had originally inhabited a world
as blankly uniform as a high-rise housing development, as featureless as a
parking lot, as destitute of life as an automated factory, it is doubtful that
he would have had a sufficiently varied experience to retain images, mold
languages, or acquire ideas. "
If unused organs atrophy, we are losing rather than gaining brain-power.
A. R. Wallace sorely offended Darwin by asking him, "If every organ represents
that minimal response to which it has been pressured by the need for survival,
whence the brain, that marvelous organ endowed with a hundred times more power
than any primitive has ever needed for survival or any modern man ever makes
use of?" What possible environment could, as a requirement for survival or any
other purpose, have called forth such a prodigal reservoir of intellect? We
can only look to a "first primeval childhood" far different from anything we
know and conclude that Adam's background reaches into a past more marvelous
than any we can imagine.
That is another thing the most recent studies are bringing to light more
clearly all the time: uniformitarianism is assumed in all calculations, but
now it begins to look to the naturalists as well as the physicists that things
were far, far different back there than we can ever imagine them, recalling H.
R. Haldane's famous remark that the universe is not only stranger than we
think it is but stranger than we ever can think it to be.
One of those innumerable hypotheses that Professor Campbell mentions, now
released for serious discussion by recent discoveries, is that human life may
have been transplanted directly from some other planet. Speculating on the
subject, we have the romantic Carl Sagan; Leslie E. Orgel of the Salk
Institute; Francis H. C. Crick, a Nobel laureate; and others. One eminent
scientist, Albert Rosenfeld, confesses, "I'm somehow not surprised at the idea
that someone out there put us here. And if such a magical, mysterious, and
powerful intelligence exists that is utterly beyond human imagining, can you
give me a good reason why I shouldn't call it God?"
Which takes us back to the issue with which the Adam question began and
which has always been the central issue of human paleontology: a matter of
definitions. They may seem trivial, secondary, naive, but the experts have
never been able to get away from it. Evolution and natural selection were
never defined to Darwin's satisfaction. Today all the specialists are trying
to agree on a clear definition for man: when is a homo a homo, and how much?
And one of our biggest stumbling blocks is not knowing how Adam relates to
other beings, earthly and heavenly. That is the root of the Adam-God
misunderstanding. (Until we care to look into the matter seriously, I will
keep my opinions in a low profile.)
Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long
ago, nor deny them a place in God's affection or even a right to
exaltation, for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as
to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They
have all gone away long before our people ever appeared. God assigned them
their proper times and functions, as he has given me mine, a full-time job
that admonishes me to remember his words to the overly eager Moses: "For mine
own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me."
(Moses 1:31.) It is Adam as my own parent who concerns me. When he walks onto
the stage, then and only then the play begins. He opens a book and starts
calling out names. They are the sons of Adam, who also qualify as sons of God,
Adam himself being a son of God. This is the book of remembrance from which
many have been blotted out. They have fallen away, refused to choose God as
their father, and by so doing were registered in Satan's camp. "Satan shall be
their father, and misery shall be their doom." (Moses 7:37.) Can we call them
sons of Adam, bene-Adam, human beings proper? The representative Egyptians,
Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans, to name only the classic civilizations of
old, each fancied themselves to be beings of a higher nature, nearer to gods
than others who inhabited the land with them (and before them), or who dwelt
in other lands. And yet they did not deny humanity to them.
Adam becomes Adam, a hominid becomes a man, when he starts keeping a
record. What kind of record? A record of his ancestors, the family line that
sets him off from all other creatures. Such records begin very early, to judge
by the fabulous genealogic knowledge of the Australian aborigines (A. P.
Elkin) or the most "primitive" Africans (L. Frobenius). Even written records
go back to ages lost in the mists of time, the Azilian pebbles, the marking of
arrows, and the identity of individuals in their relationships with each
other. Whether former speculation about life on other worlds is now to be
upgraded to life from other worlds remains to be seen, but Adam is wonderful
enough without that. That gap between the record keeper and all the other
creatures we know anything about is so unimaginably enormous and yet so neat
and abrupt that we can only be dealing with another sort of being, a quantum
leap from one world to another. Here is something not derivative from anything
that has gone before on the local scene, even though they all share the same
atoms.
1. Jordan, Robert Paul, "Washington Cathedral, `House of Prayer for All
People'," National Geographic Magazine, April 1980, pp. 566-67.
2. Life on Other Worlds, Symposium (CBS), sponsored by Jos. E. Seagram
& Sons, Mar. 1, 1961.
3. Smith, Joseph, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints, 7 vols., 2nd ed. rev., edited by B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1932-51), 5:362; Journal of
Discourses, 26 vols. (London: Latter-day Saints' Book Depot, 1854-86), 10:147.
4. Cited in Joad, Cyril Edwin Mitchinson, Guide to Philosophy (New
York: Dover, 1946), p. 524.
5. Jelinek, Arthur J., "The Lower Paleolithic: Current Evidence and
Interpretations," Annual Review of Anthropology 6(1977): 28.
6. Dubos, René, So Human an Animal (New York: Scribners, 1968), pp.
14,15.
7. Dubos, p. 195.
8. Dubos, p.209.
9. Singh, R. S., Absurd Drama 1945-1956 (Delhi: Hariyana Press, 1973),
p. 5.
10. Campbell, Bernard G., "Conceptual Progress in Physical Anthropology:
Fossil Man,"Annual Review of Anthropology 1 (1972): 27.
11. Jerison, Harry J., "Fossil Evidence of the Evolution of the Human
Brain," Annual Review of Anthropology 4(1975): 46.
12. Jerison, p. 46.
13. Jerison, p.46.
14. Pilbeam, D., "Recent Finds and Interpretations of Miocene
Hominoids,"Annual Review of Anthropology 8(1979): 339f.
15. Pilbeam, p. 339f.
16. Jelinek, p.20.
17. Campbell, p. 27.
18. Pilbeam, p. 350.
19. Howells, William W., "Homo Erectus," in B. M. Fagan, ed., Avenues to
Antiquity, Readings from the Scientific American (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman
and Company, 1976), p. 30.
20. Pilbeam, p.350.
21. Washburn, Sherwood L., "Tools and Human Evolution," in Fagan, p.27.
22. Simpson, G. G., quoted by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The
Genesis Flood (Philadelphia: Baker Book, 1961), p. 443.
23. Darwin, Charles, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected
Letters (New York: Dover, 1958), p. 62.
24. Dobzhansky, Theodosius, "Evolution at Work," Science 127 (May 9,
1958): 1092.
25. Dobzhansky, p. 1092.
26. Howells, p. 35.
27. B. Rensberger, in New York Times, Sept. 10, 1979.
28. Rensberger.
29. Pilbeam, p.343.
30. Pilbeam, p.341.
31. Campbell, pp. 43,44.
32. Washburn, p.5.
33. Jelinek, pp. 16,19.
34. Washburn, p. 15.
35. Washburn, p.6.
36. Washburn, p.15.
37. Lumley, Henry de, "A Paleolithic Camp at Nice," in Fagan, p.39f.
38. Klein, Richard G., "Ice-Age Hunters of the Ukraine," in Fagan, pp.
66,71.
39. Klein, p. 73.
40. Klein, p. 75.
41. Dobzhansky, p. 1097.
42. Barrow, John D., and Joseph Silk, "The Structure of the Early
Universe," Scientific American 424 (April 1980): 127.
43. Barrow, p. 128.
44. Lussier, Ernest, "Adam in Genesis 1, 1-4, 24," Catholic Biblical
Quarterly 18 (1956): 137-38.
45. Santillana, Giorgio de, Hamlet's Mill (Boston: David R. Godine,
1969), pp. 68-71.
46. Cited in Dubos, p. 174.
47. Discussed in Rosenfeld, Albert, "Did Someone Out There Put Us Here?"
Saturday Review, Nov. 20,1973, p. 59.
48. Nibley, Hugh, "The Arrow, the Hunter, and the State," Western
Political Quarterly 2(1949): 328-44.
"Before Adam" is the edited text of an address given to the BYU community on
April 1, 1980.
My story begins with Adam and Eve, the archetypal man and woman, in whom
each of us is represented. From the most ancient times their thrilling
confrontation has been dramatized in rites and ceremonies throughout the
world, as part of a great creation-drama rehearsed at the new year to
celebrate the establishment of divine authority on earth in the person of the
king and his companion. There is a perfect unity between these two mortals;
they are "one flesh." The word rib expresses the ultimate in proximity,
intimacy, and identity. When Jeremiah speaks of "keepers of my tsela (rib)"
(Jeremiah 20:10), he means bosom friends, inseparable companions. Such things
are to be taken figuratively, as in Moses 3:22 and Genesis 2:22, when we are
told not that the woman was made out of the rib or from the rib, but that she
was the rib, a powerful metaphor. So likewise "bone of my bones, and flesh of
my flesh" (Genesis 2:23), "and they shall cleave together, as "one flesh", the
condition is that of total identity. "Woman, because she was taken out of man"
(Moses 3:23; italics added) is interesting because the word woman is here
mysteriously an extension of man, a form peculiar to English; what the element
wo- or wif- means or where it came from remains a mystery, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary. Equally mysterious is the idea of the man and woman
as the apple of each other's eye. Philological dictionaries tell us that it is
a moot question whether the word apple began with the eye or the fruit. The
Greek word is kora or korasion, meaning a little girl or little woman you see
in the eye of the beloved; the Latin equivalent is pupilla, from pupa or
little doll, from which we get our word pupil. What has diverted me to this is
the high degree to which this concept developed in Egypt in the earliest
times. The Eye of Re is his daughter, sister, and wife, he sees himself when
he looks into her eye, and the other way around. It is the image in the eye
that is the ideal, the wdjat, that which is whole and perfect. For "it is not
good that man should be alone"; he is incomplete by himself-the man is not
without the woman in the Lord. (See 1 Corinthians 11:11.)
The perfect and beautiful union of Adam and Eve excited the envy and
jealousy of the Evil One, who made it his prime objective to break it up. He
began by making both parties self-conscious and uncomfortable. "Ho, ho," said
he, "you are naked. You had better run and hide, or at least put something on.
How do you think you look to your Father?" They had reason to be ashamed,
because their nakedness betrayed their disobedience. They had eaten of the
forbidden fruit. But Satan wanted to shock them with his pious show of prudish
alarm, he had made them ashamed of being seen together, and that was one wedge
driven between them.
His first step (or wedge) had been to get one of them to make an
important decision without consulting the other. He approached Adam in the
absence of Eve with a proposition to make him wise, and being turned down he
sought out the woman to find her alone and thus undermine her resistance more
easily. It is important that he was able to find them both alone, a point
about which the old Jewish legends have a good deal to say. The tradition is
that the two were often apart in the Garden engaged in separate tasks to which
each was best fitted. In other words, being one flesh did not deprive either
of them of individuality or separate interests and activities.
After Eve had eaten the fruit and Satan had won his round, the two were
now drastically separated, for they were of different natures. But Eve, who in
ancient lore is the one who outwits the serpent and trips him up with his own
smartness, defeated this trick by a clever argument. First she asked Adam if
he intended to keep all of God's commandments. Of course he did! All of them?
Naturally! And what, pray, was the first and foremost of those commandments?
Was it not to multiply and replenish the earth, the universal commandment
given to all God's creatures? And how could they keep that commandment if they
were separated? It had undeniable priority over the commandment not to eat the
fruit. So Adam could only admit that she was right and go along: "I see that
it must be so," he said, but it was she who made him see it. This is much more
than a smart way of winning her point, however. It is the clear declaration
that man and woman were put on the earth to stay together and have a
family, that is their first obligation and must supersede everything else.
Now a curse was placed on Eve, and it looked as if she would have to pay
a high price for taking the initiative in the search for knowledge. To our
surprise the identical curse was placed on Adam also. For Eve, God "will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow shalt thou bring
forth children." (Genesis 3:16.) The key is the word for sorrow, atsav,
meaning to labor, to toil, to sweat, to do something very hard. To multiply
does not mean to add or increase but to repeat over and over again; the word
in the Septuagint is plethynomai, as in the multiplying of words in the
repetitious prayers of the ancients. Both the conception and the labor of Eve
will be multiple; she will have many children. Then the Lord says to Adam, "In
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life" (that is, the bread that
his labor must bring forth from the earth). The identical word is used in both
cases; the root meaning is to work hard at cutting or digging; both the man
and the woman must sorrow and both must labor. (The Septuagint word is lype,
meaning bodily or mental strain, discomfort, or affliction.) It means not to
be sorry, but to have a hard time. If Eve must labor to bring forth, so too
must Adam labor (Genesis 3:17; Moses 4:23) to quicken the earth so it shall
bring forth. Both of them bring forth life with sweat and tears, and Adam is
not the favored party. If his labor is not as severe as hers, it is more
protracted. For Eve's life will be spared long after her
childbearing, "nevertheless thy life shall be spared", while Adam's toil must
go on to the end of his days: "In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of
thy life!" Even retirement is no escape from that sorrow. The thing to notice
is that Adam is not let off lightly as a privileged character; he is as bound
to Mother Eve as she is to the law of her husband. And why not? If he was
willing to follow her, he was also willing to suffer with her, for this
affliction was imposed on Adam expressly "because thou hast hearkened unto. .
. thy wife and, hast eaten of the fruit."
And both their names mean the same thing. For one thing they are both
called Adam: "And [he] called their name Adam" (Genesis 5:2; italics added).
We are told in the book of Moses that Adam means "many," a claim con- firmed
by recent studies of the Egyptian name of Atum, Tem, Adamu. The same applies
to Eve, whose epithet is "the mother of all living."
And what a woman! In the Eden story she holds her own as a lone woman in
the midst of an all-male cast of no less than seven supermen and angels. Seven
males to one lone woman! Interestingly enough, in the lost and fallen world
that reverses the celestial order, the ratio is also reversed, when seven
women cling to one righteous man. This calls for an explanation: God commanded
his creatures to go into the world "two and two," and yet we presently find
the ancient patriarchs with huge families and many wives. What had happened?
To anticipate our story, it so happened that when the first great apostasy
took place in the days of Adam and Eve, the women, being wise after the nature
of Mother Eve, were less prone to be taken in by the enticements of the
Cainite world. For one thing they couldn't, they were too busy having children
to get into all that elaborate nonsensical mischief. Seven women could see the
light when only one man could.
The numerical imbalance in the Garden is caused by the presence of all
the male heavenly visitors on the scene. Why are all the angels male? Some
very early Christian writings suggest an interesting explanation. In the
earliest Christian poem, "The Pearl," and in recently discovered Mandaean
manuscripts (the Berlin Kephalia), the Christian comes to earth from his
heavenly home, leaving his royal parents behind, for a period of testing upon
the earth. Then, having overcome the dragon, he returns to the heavenly place,
where he is given a rousing welcome. The first person to greet him on his
return is his heavenly mother, who was the last one to embrace him as he left
to go down to earth. "The first embrace is that which the Mother of Life gave
to the First Man as he separated himself from her in order to come down to
earth to his testing." So we have a division of labor. The angels are male
because they are missionaries, as the Church on the earth is essentially a
missionary organization; the women are engaged in another, but equally
important, task: preserving the establishment while the men are away. This
relationship is pervasive in the tradition of the race, what the geographer
Jean Bruhnes called "the wise force of the earth and the mad force of the
sun." It is beautifully expressed in an ode by Sappho:
The evening brings back all the things that the bright sun of
morning has scattered
You bring back the sheep, and the goat and the little boy back to
his mother.
Odysseus must wander and have his adventures, it is his nature. But life would
be nothing to him if he did not know all the time that he had his faithful
Penelope waiting for him at home. She is no stick-in-the-mud, however, as
things are just as exciting, dangerous, and demanding at home as on the road.
(In fact, letters from home to missionary husbands are usually more exciting
than their letters from the field.)
So who was the more important? Eve is the first on the scene, not Adam,
who woke up only long enough to turn over to fall asleep again; and then when
he really woke up he saw the woman standing there, ahead of him, waiting for
him. What could he assume but that she had set it all up, she must be the
mother of all living! In all that follows she takes the initiative, pursuing
the search for ever greater light and knowledge while Adam cautiously holds
back. Who was the wiser for that? The first daring step had to be taken, and
if in her enthusiasm she let herself be tricked by the persuasive talk of a
kindly "brother," it was no fault of hers. Still it was an act of disobedience
for which someone had to pay, and she accepted the responsibility. And had she
been so foolish? It is she who perceives and points out to Adam that they have
done the right thing after all. Sorrow, yes, but she is willing to pass
through it for the sake of knowledge, knowledge of good and evil that will
provide the test and the victory for working out their salvation as God
intends. It is better this way than the old way; she is the progressive one.
She had not led him astray, for God had specifically commanded her to stick to
Adam no matter what: "The woman thou gavest me and commanded that she should
stay with me: she gave me the fruit, and I did eat." She takes the initiative,
and he hearkens to her, "because thou hast hearkened to thy wife." She led and
he followed. Here Adam comes to her defense as well as his own; if she twisted
his arm, she had no choice either. "Don't you see?" he says to the Lord. "You
commanded her to stay with me. What else could she do but take me along with
her?"
Next it is the woman who sees through Satan's disguise of clever
hypocrisy, identifies him, and exposes him for what he is. She discovers the
principle of opposites by which the world is governed and views it with
high-spirited optimism: it is not wrong that there is opposition in
everything, it is a constructive principle making it possible for people to be
intelligently happy. It is better to know the score than not to know it.
Finally, it is the "seed of the woman" that repels the serpent and embraces
the gospel: she it is who first accepts the gospel of repentance. There is no
patriarchy or matriarchy in the Garden; the two supervise each other. Adam is
given no arbitrary power; Eve is to heed him only insofar as he obeys their
Father, and who decides that? She must keep check on him as much as he does on
her. It is, if you will, a system of checks and balances in which each party
is as distinct and independent in its sphere as are the departments of
government under the Constitution, and just as dependent on each other.
The Dispensation of Adam ended as all great dispensations have ended, in
a great apostasy. Adam and Eve brought up their children diligently in the
gospel, but the adversary was not idle in his continued attempts to drive
wedges between them. He had first to overcome the healthy revulsion, "the
enmity," between his followers and "the seed of the woman," and he began with
Cain, who went all the way with him "for the sake of getting gain." "And Adam
and Eve blessed the name of God, and they made all things known unto their
sons and their daughters. And Satan came among them, saying: Believe it not. .
. . And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish."
(Moses 5:12-13.) Even in the garden mankind were subject to temptation; but
they were not evil by nature, they had to work at that. All have fallen, but
how far we fall depends on us. From Cain and Lamech through the Watchers and
Enoch to the mandatory cleansing of the Flood, the corruption spread and
enveloped all the earth. Central to the drama was a never-ending tension and
conflict between the matriarchal and patriarchal orders, both of which were
perversions. Each has its peculiar brand of corruption.
The matriarchal cultures are sedentary (remember that the mother stays
home either as Penelope or as the princess confined in the tower), that is,
agricultural, chthonian, centering around the Earth Mother. The rites are
mostly nocturnal, lunar, voluptuous, and licentious. The classic image is that
of the great, rich, corrupt, age-old, and oppressive city Babylon, queen of
the world, metropolis, fashion center, the super mall, the scarlet woman, the
whore of all the earth, whose merchants and bankers are the oppressors of all
people. Though the matriarchy makes for softness and decay, beneath the gentle
or beguiling or glittering exterior is the fierce toughness, cunning, and
ambition of Miss Piggy, Becky Sharp, or Scarlett O'Hara.
The patriarchal order lends itself to equally impressive abuses. It is
nomadic. The hero is the wandering Odysseus or knight errant, the miles
gloriosus, the pirate, condottiere, the free enterpriser, not the farmer tied
to wife and soil, but the hunter and soldier out for adventure, glory, and
loot; not the city, but the golden horde, the feralis exercitus that sweeps
down upon the soft and sedentary cultures of the coast and the river valley.
Its gods are sky gods with the raging sun at their head. Its depredations are
not by decay but by fire and sword. As predatory and greedy as the matriarchy,
it cumulates its wealth not by unquestioned immemorial custom but by sacred
and self-serving laws. The perennial routine calls for the patriarchal tribes
of the mountains and the steppes to overrun the wealthy and corrupt cities of
the plain only to be absorbed and corrupted by them in turn, so that what we
end up with in the long run is the worst of both cultures.
In this great apostasy a new relationship of men and women is the
keynote. Lamech got the same degree of Master Mahan as Cain did. These dire
operations entail great secrecy, and Lamech's wives "rebelled against him, and
declared these things abroad, and had not compassion; wherefore Lamech was
despised, and cast out, and came not among the sons of men, lest he should
die. And thus the works of darkness began to prevail among all the sons of
men." (Moses 5:53-55; italics added.) Thus with infallible insight the book of
Moses introduces us into the perennial year-drama, which in the past fifty
years has become a central theme of comparative world religion and literature.
We cannot pursue this fascinating subject here, except to note that from now
on the king in his ambition has to cope with equally ambitious females. Robert
Graves takes us through all the primal myths of the Greeks, where this deadly
rivalry is the name of the game. "In this archaic religious system," he
begins, "there were as yet neither gods nor priests, but only a universal
goddess and her priestesses, woman being the dominant sex and man her
frightened victim." Not a healthy relationship; but matriarchy and patriarchy
must always be mortal enemies. Why? Because of the last part of the word, the
-archy. In Bailly's dictionary, the first definition given for the word -arche
is "beginning, specifically the origin of a quarrel or `a murder'"; the second
definition is "command, power, authority," which is what the quarrel is about.
The suffix archy means always to be first in order, whether in time or
eminence; the point is that there can only be one first. To be first is
Satan's first principle: "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n."
Whatever the game, the object is to be Number One.
Why do we lay more emphasis on the patriarchal order than the matriarchy
in our world today? That is unavoidable if we would maintain a balance between
the two, for the matriarchal succession enjoys a great natural advantage that,
where it prevails, renders the other all but helpless. There is rarely any
doubt as to who a baby's mother is, but paternity may always be challenged. In
the end the only assurance we have of a true patriarchal succession is the
word not of the father but of the mother, as the Egyptians well knew, Maat is
the official approval of the mother, without which no dynasty could be secure.
To assure a true patriarchal succession therefore requires something in the
way of checks and controls on the women, a stricter moral code than that
required by the matriarchy, which, as we have noted, tends to become lax and
promiscuous with the passing of time. With close rules, safeguards, and
vigilant surveillance it was only too easy for the patriarchs to become
arrogant, dictatorial, self-righteous, and oppressive. The gospel sets
absolute limitations beyond which patriarchal authority may not be
exercised, the least hint of unkindness acts as a circuit-breaker. "Amen to
the priesthood or the authority of that man." (D&C 121:37.) Without that
sacred restraint, patriarchal supremacy has ever tended to become abusive.
A wonderful insight into the archaic order in the bad days after the
flood is found in the book of Ether:
Now Jared became exceedingly sorrowful because of the loss of the
kingdom, for he had set his heart upon the kingdom and upon the glory of
the world.
Now the daughter of Jared being exceedingly expert, . . . thought to
devise a plan whereby she could redeem the kingdom.
Now the daughter of Jared was exceedingly fair. And. . . she did
talk with her father, and said unto him: Whereby hath my father so much
sorrow? Hath he not read the record which our fathers brought across the
great deep? . . . an account concerning them of old, that they by their
secret plans did obtain kingdoms and great glory?
And now, therefore, let my father send for Akish,. . . and behold, I
am fair, and I will dance before him, . . . he will desire me to wife, .
. . then shall ye say: I will give her if ye will bring unto me the head
of my father, the king. [Here the younger king, at the instigation of the
princess, a daughter of Jared, seeks the head of the old king, following
the ancient practice.] . .
And Akish did administer unto them the oaths which were given by
them of old who also sought power, which had been handed down even from
Cain. . .
And they were kept up by the power of the devil. to help such as
sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to. . .
commit. . . whoredoms. (Ether 8:7-10, 13, 15-16; italics added.)
And. . . Jared was anointed king. . . and he gave unto Akish his
daughter to wife.
[Akish is now next in line.] And. . . Akish sought the life of
[Jared] . . . and [he] obtained the head of his father-in-law, as he sat
upon his throne. . .
And. . . Akish began to be jealous of his son [and so starved him to
death in prison]. . .
Now the people of Akish were desirous for gain, even as Akish was
desirous for power; wherefore, the sons of Akish did offer them money. .
.
And there began to be a war between the sons of Akish and Akish. . .
unto the destruction of nearly all the people of the kingdom. (Ether
9:4-5,7, 11-12; italics added.)
And it all began with a woman: Dux femina facti.
According to the oldest mythologies, all the troubles of the race are but
a perennial feud between the matriarchy and patriarchy; between men and women
seeking power and gain at each other's expense.
With infallible instinct Shakespeare takes us into a timeless world of
elemental spirits where a fairy king and queen are found shamelessly bickering
over a piece of property, a little slave. Proud Titania and jealous Oberon are
playing a silly game of one-upmanship, silly, but with appalling results. All
nature is blasted and blighted, and the only progeny of the squabbling pair is
universal sterility, described in harrowing detail by the queen: "And this
progeny of evil comes of us, we are its parent and original!" What dismal
parenthood! And it all comes of ambition and greed, to which gods and
goddesses as well as kings and queens are prone.
As a sampling of what goes on and on and on, take the Olympian creation
myth: "At the beginning of all things Mother Earth emerged from chaos and bore
her son Uranus as she slept"; the two of them united to beget a race of
monsters as "earth and sky parted in deadly strife," which, according to
Graves, "must refer to the clash between the patriarchal and matriarchal
principles." The giant children revolted against their father, Uranus, who
threw them into Tartarus; in revenge the mother persuaded their leader,
Cronus, to murder his father; upon coming to the throne, Cronus in turn
imprisoned his own sons and married his sister Riiea. Jealous of his children,
he destroyed them to keep them from deposing him until their mother conspired
with her son, Zeus, to dispatch Cronus exactly as he had his father, Uranus.
Prometheus became chief advisor to Zeus, the new king, who chained him to a
mountain for being "too philanthropic." On the mountain Prometheus had a
conversation with the girl Io, who was fleeing for her life; Zeus had brutally
attacked her in his lust, and his jealous wife, Hera, to avenge herself on
him, ordered that Io should be pursued forever by a gadfly. Prometheus
prophesied to her, however, that Zeus, the supermacho tyrant, would fall in
turn before a hero descended from Io herself. And so it goes, on and on. There
must be a better way, and there is.
It was Abraham and Sarah who restored the state of our primal parents,
she as well as he, for in the perfect balance they maintained, he is as
dependent on her as she on him. With them were restored the covenants and
promises of our first parents. The world did everything to force them apart,
and if they had thought in terms of power and gain it would certainly have
succeeded. What was it that kept them together? The patriarchal narratives
bring a new and surprising element into world literature. In the most brutal
of worlds they are unique as romantic love stories, in which the female lead
enjoys a billing equal if not superior to that of the male, with her own name,
genealogy, royalty, and fortune, and as much bargaining power as the man.
True, all the marriage brokerage is carried on by families and dynasties, with
ambitious parents and arrogant monarchs trying to spoil the love match, but
God approves of the romance, and for once the dire attempts at substituting
family and dynastic business interests for affection are frustrated. From
Abraham and Sarah down through Isaac and Jacob and to Joseph and Asenath, that
is the plot of the story.
Thus Pharaoh (Nimrod) feared Abraham's power and priesthood (as predicted
by Nimrod's astrologers) and so first attempted to prevent Abraham's birth by
putting to death all the male infants born in the kingdom and then by
imprisoning him as a child and finally by putting him on an altar from which
he was delivered by an angel. Finally the proud monarch surrendered and
conceded that the God of Abraham had all the power after all.
It was also a pharaoh who sought the hand of Sarah, the true princess, in
order to raise up a royal progeny by her. Upon a royal bed identical in form
with the altar of Abraham, she too prayed for deliverance and was rescued by
an angel while the king was constrained to recognize Sarah's true marriage and
heritage, bestowing upon her regal insignia and a royal escort. At God's
command, Abraham humbled himself to ask Sarah as a favor to declare herself to
be his sister, eligible to marry another and thus save his life. This is only
part of the deference that Abraham had to make to his wife, and it left no
place for his male pride. Sarah, on the other hand, with equal humility, went
to Abraham confessing God's hand in her childlessness and actually begging him
to have children by another woman. Can one imagine a greater test of her
pride? When both sides of the equation are reduced, the remainder on both
sides is only a great love.
Again the apostasy. Recently scholars have compared Sarah with Helen of
Troy, and the latter can show us as well as anyone how the romantic tradition
of the patriarchs went sour. It begins with attempts at seduction, wanton
perversion of the forbidden fruit. Queenly Hera offers Paris power and gain to
get the golden apple from him while Aphrodite promises him the ultimate, sex
and prestige, the world's most beautiful woman for a wife; as for Athena, she
is a freak, invented by the patriarchal interests to expedite their takeover
of the matriarchal claims: she was not of woman born, but sprang in full
masculine armor from the head (not the heart) of the All-Father Zeus, a very
masculine damsel, indeed, who always votes with the male contingency; and of
course she is ever-virgin and never a mother. Aphrodite got the award, the
golden apple, and procured Paris his beautiful wife, who was already married
to an obnoxious male chauvinist, who was a king and a serious business rival
to her new husband (for the Achaeans and Trojans had long waged old war for
the control of the rich grain trade that passed through the straits from
Russia). It was Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, head of the whole vast
conglomerate, who led the expedition against Troy. The opening lines of the
Iliad show this bully-boy insisting that the hero Achilles turn over to him
the fair daughter of the priest Chyses, whom Achilles has won in battle.
Agamemnon's claim to the girl is very simple: he is the boss, and he wants
her. To the girl's father, who comes to ransom her, he bawls out: "No, I am
not going to let her go! She's going to get old and gray in my house, far from
her home in the weaving department, and she's going to bed with me whenever I
feel like it. Now you get out of here; don't bug me, if you want to leave in
one piece!" That is the kind of a great leader Agamemnon is. Note here that
Greek women were treated like captives because originally they were captives;
when the warrior hordes overran the ancient people of the coast, they
subjected their matriarchal society to perpetual suppression, though from time
to time the smoldering fires broke out fiercely. It is not surprising that
Agamemnon, to expedite his journey to Troy, sacrifices his young daughter
Iphigenia to Poseidon. But this gave a moral pretext to his wife,
Clytemnestra, as ambitious and unscrupulous as he, to connive with her lover
in murdering her husband on the day of his return. For which the son, Orestes,
murdered his mother and the king who ruled by her sufferance. While the
avenging Furies pursued Orestes, the gods took a vote to decide whether his
avenging of his father justified the killing of his mother. Not surprisingly,
the vote split on party lines, every god voting to acquit the defendant and
every goddess voting to convict him, another showdown between male and female.
The tie was broken by the vote of Athena, invented for the express purpose, it
is believed, of tipping the scales for the patriarchy. She also holds the
balance between imperious Zeus and relentless Hera in their ceaseless feuding
at the expense of poor Odysseus and Penelope. "Zeus and Hera bickered
constantly. Vexed by his infidelities, she often humiliated him by her
scheming ways. . . . He never fully trusted Hera. . . . She therefore resorted
to ruthless intrigue." (Iliad 1, 53.)
In Egypt, Israel lived under a matriarchal monarchy from which they were
delivered under Moses. Moses' romantic career parallels that of Abraham to a
remarkable degree. The tension between matriarchy and patriarchy begins with
the Hebrew midwives refusing Pharaoh's command to put to death all the male
babies, an order which the Egyptians carry out with a will. Moses is rescued
by his mother, placed in a reed float, and rescued and brought up in the
rushes of the Delta swamp by two women, a nurse and a princess-mother (exactly
like the infant Horus, protected and raised by Isis and Nephthys in the same
swamp of Chemmis). Then Moses marries one of seven water-drawing maidens, who
declares her independence and to whose father (not his own father, but his
wife's) the hero always defers. He balks at assuming the role of the pharaoh
he has overcome in the sea, and indeed it was not he but Miriam who celebrated
the victory over the waters and the rival king. When he turns Nile water into
blood, he is performing an age-old rite reserved to the women of Egypt
celebrating the founding of the nation by a woman who discovered the land. He
leads the people to a place of twelve wells and seventy palms, the symbolic
number reminding us that Sarah figures as a palm tree in Abraham's dream in
the Genesis Apocryphon, as Nausicaa does in Odysseus' fantasy. When the tables
are turned against the Egyptians, it is their male first born who
perish-another blow at male succession. Surprisingly, it is not Moses but his
wife Zipporah who circumcises their first born son and proceeds to rebuke her
husband with stinging contempt. Plainly the attempt at patriarchal assertion
met tough resistance. The people rejected Moses as their leader even after he
had saved them (Exodus 16:2; 32:23) and plunged with a will into the
licentious matriarchal rites led by the wives and daughters and their sons
under their influence (there is no mention of husbands or brothers), who
contributed their gold earrings to make the golden calf. That was Ka Mutef,
"Bull of His Mother," who represented to the Egyptians the youthful pharaoh's
submission to his mother. While they were singing and dancing in the best
matriarchal tradition, Moses ordered the death of every male participating in
the rites; they were to "slay every man his brother" if he caught him at the
party. (This third liquidation of males was followed by a solemn rededication
to the patriarchal order: "Consecrate yourselves. . . even every man upon his
son, and upon his brother; that he may bestow upon you a blessing this day."
[Exodus 32:29; italics added.])
This apostasy had been one of the fastest yet: "They have turned aside
quickly out of the way which I commanded them," said the Lord to Moses.
(Exodus 32:8; italics added.) "My people have sold themselves for gold and
silver." That, along with total depravity, completes the picture and brings
the world order back to normal.
After Moses, the romantic David had his women-trouble, as we all know.
Like Aaron, he danced in the manner of Pharaoh before the altar, and the
queen, looking on, "despised him in her heart." What need be said of Solomon
and the ladies? That supermacho male chauvinist met his match in the Shulamite
woman, who outwitted the all-wise Solomon and thoroughly humiliated him. A
whole epic cycle revolves around Solomon's Benedict-and-Beatrice,
Petrucchio-and-Catherine game with the Queen of Sheba, who, as Bilqis (the
name designates her as a ritual hierodule), matches wits with him for throne
and empire, in which he cheats shamelessly but is beaten just the same.
Years ago I collected some hundred versions of the story. Beginning with
the account of how Jacob took advantage of the helpless Tamara, who turned his
sin against him and came out winner, I was struck to find a whole line of
ancient queens doing the same sort of thing, and usually going under the same
name. Thus when Cyprus, having conquered all the world but one country, that
of the Amazon Massagtae, ignored the wise counsel of his advisor Croesus and
invaded that land, its queen Tomyris trapped him at a banquet, where she cut
off his head and sloshed it around in a bag of blood. I do not talk about such
things for their sensationalism but for their extreme frequency in myth and
history, they form a regular pattern, a constant groundwork for history. (In
the long line of tragicomic Odi et amo ["I can't live with you and I can't
live without you!"] confrontations, man and woman stage an endless tournament
of dirty events with survival as the prize, in all of which there is something
very wrong, however much we have come to relish it in novels and TV programs.
Can this be the purpose of the marvelous providence that brings men and women
together? If we must all live together in the eternities, it can never be in
such a spirit.)
And so we find the celestial order of marriage resorted to again in the
meridian of time. From the earliest writings both defending and attacking
Christianity, it is clear that the relationship between the sexes was
something very special with them. Outsiders were shocked and scandalized, for
example, by the promiscuity implied in the Christian practice of calling each
other brother and sister. A more-than-ordinary emphasis on family life is
apparent in the warnings of First Clement to the leaders of the church that
they are neglecting to pay sufficient attention to their own families and the
bringing up of their children in the church. The more recent discoveries of
early Christian documents allow us insights into the nature of the teaching
that incurred the wrathful criticism of an immoral age that did not understand
it at all. Thus we learn in the Gospel of Philip and the Apocalypse of Adam
how Adam and Eve were united in celestial union before the creation of the
world but, upon descending to the earth, became separated, with death entering
into the scene. Christ came to earth, says the Gospel of Philip, "for the
express purpose of bringing them together in eternal life. Thanks to him those
who are united in the Bridal Chamber will never more be separated." The
ordinances here are symbolic, but the images are important models to be
followed. Let us recall how often the Lord refers to himself as the
Bridegroom. The symbols we have here are indeed meager compared with the
perfect glory. The things we do in symbols merely hint at things as they are,
"for there is glory above glory and power upon power. . . . The Holy of Holies
and the Bridal Chamber, these are the ultimate. . . . Though sin still
enslaves us, when the truth is revealed the perfect life will flow for
everyone. . . that those who were separated may be united and fulfilled. . . .
All who enter the Bridal Chamber may beget in the light, not after the manner
of nocturnal mating. . . . Whoever becomes a Son of the Bridal Chamber will
receive the light. . . and when he goes out of the world he shall already have
received the true instruction through types and images."
That early Christian ideas of marriage were far from the conventional
ones is plain enough from the difficult solution to the problem arrived at in
the fourth century, when the ceremonies of the church were widely accommodated
to those of the world: "Was the church conquering the world," asks the great
Catholic historian Duchesne, "or was not the world rather conquering the
church?" The solution was to accommodate a difficult concept of marriage with
the practices of the world and to accept that ancient and established cop-out,
celibacy. In the Christian literature of the early centuries, when
Christianity was splitting up into many sects, each claiming to possess alone
the gnosis, the secret teaching of the Lord to the apostles after his
resurrection, one reads much of the tribulations of Sophia, who is equated
with Zoa or Eve. Once long ago, she tried to become perfectly independent and
go it alone. She was Wisdom, as her name signifies (the Hebrew Hokhma), who is
almost a person in the scriptures, but not quite. If the woman is life she is
also Wisdom. Well, Sophia thought that she, as the mother of all, could not
only produce but govern the universe all by herself; the result was a ghastly
abortion. Chastened and terrified, she was rescued by Jesus Christ, the
Bridegroom, who reached out his hand to her and took her back again, for he
needed her too, and only when the two worked together in perfect accord could
God's purpose go forward in the universe. Jesus was born when Caesar Augustus
was inaugurating the long line of emperors while his wife Livia was initiating
the long and fateful line of imperial wives and mistresses. She poisoned right
and left to get her son Tiberius on the throne, not because she loved him, but
because that was the way of preserving and increasing her own power, and
wealth. (Nobody knew better than the Romans that when the treasury was empty
the emperor was finished.) Most of the Roman emperors were murdered by their
successors, who in turn were murdered by their successors. Rome's one original
contribution to letters was a brilliant and perceptive line of satirists
telling us all about life in the Roman world: the theme, of course, was money
and sex.
From the confused jumble of traditions and beliefs of late antiquity (the
heritage of very ancient times indeed), there emerged at the beginning of the
Middle Ages such mysteries as the Round Table, in which we find rejuvenated
the romantic ideal of the hero who is never ambitious for himself, and the
lady pure and holy whom he serves. A more dramatic contrast to the reality of
the times (as we see in the ten books of Gregory of Tours' Frankish History)
would be hard to imagine. What put a quietus to the Round Table was partly the
stress and tension of perpetual dalliance under the code of chivalry, if
Lynette snobbishly humiliated her knight, so Galahad prudishly denied his
favors to the ladies, but mostly the failure was brought on by the jealousy
and ambition (personified by the sinister Mordred) that poisoned the minds of
true lovers.
Shakespeare has given us a classic study in sex and power in Macbeth.
There is a beautiful relationship between the lord and his lady, until they
both start reaching for power. The moral of the play is that the lust for
power and gain inevitably destroys the true and proper nature of the sexes. It
begins with the archaic matriarchy, dark, chthonian Hecate, no less, who sets
three women (the witches) to trap and destroy the hero. But they are unnatural
women: "You should be women," says the hero's companion when he sees them. But
what can these bearded creatures be? Full of confidence, the hero brushes them
aside, and yet he is fascinated by them, "Speak then to me, who neither beg
nor fear your favors or your hate." Proudly independent, he has already taken
the bait and is in the trap. Their prophecies get him all excited, and he
writes to his wife, who reads his letter and sees right off that in order to
promote themselves she and her husband will have to forget all about their
natural roles as man and woman:
Yet do I fear thy nature.
It is too full the milk of human kindness. . .
For Macbeth was a kind man to begin with (the spark of his former self
flashes through from time to time during the play), and the lady was known as
a sweet and gentle woman. But now she must get down to business:
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valor of my tongue,
All that impedes thee from the golden round.
It is the crown they are after. Why settle for less? In view of such a
prospect, all their former values are violently wrenched in a new direction as
a messenger comes in and tells the lady that they are about to have a royal
guest, the king is already in power:
Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. .
[She must be unsexed to follow her ambition.]
Come to my woman's breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers.
Already milk again: that is the human side of them; both of them share the
milk of human kindness, but they must get rid of it to get ahead. Next,
flinching from the murder, Macbeth shows his old human self when he is stopped
short by the thought of "pity, like a naked newborn babe." But Lady Macbeth
pushes him on by telling him to become a man. He doesn't like that; a man is
one thing, a monster is another: "I dare do all that may become a man. Who
dares do more is none."
You are wrong, she says; I am trying to make a man of you now. That means
going all the way:
When durst do it, then you were a man, And to be more. . . would
Be so much more the man.
Then she gets back to milk again, and says a terrible thing:
I have given suck, and know
How tender `tis to love the babe that milks me.
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and
dashed the
brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
Unsexed as a woman, unnatural as a mother-if that's what it takes to get
what she wants. And what does she want? Power. She wins the argument.
Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.
[She is too good to be a woman! Women are weak.]
But Lady Macbeth has her moment of weakness: "Had he not resembled my
father as he slept, I had done `t." The next words she cries out are, "My
husband!" Later she takes him to task: "My hands are of your color, but I
shame to wear a heart so white."
Macduff tells Lady Macbeth he cannot tell her what has happened:
O gentle lady.
The repetition, in a woman's ear,
Would murder as it fell.
[It should, but she is no longer a woman.]
In fact, someone describes the stormy night as "unnatural." So the old
matriarchs gave Macbeth the crown, but the whole thing is wrong.
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown
And put a barren scepter in my grip.
(The words are significant, this sort of success is fruitless and
barren.) Macbeth does have a conscience: "Oh, full of scorpions is my mind,
dear wife!" He does not want to involve her in any more murders: "Be innocent
of the knowledge, dearest chuck" (an almost comical betrayal of how he wanted
to think of her still). But at the banquet she is at him again: "Are you a
man?" "Proper stuff!" "These flaws and starts. . . would well become a woman's
story at a winter's fire, authorized by her grandam. Shame itself." "What,
quite unmanned in folly? Fie, for shame!"
The ultimate humiliation is now that he should be like a woman, a silly,
superstitious woman, a feeble, helpless old woman.
To the ghost he says: "What man dare, I dare." "Protest me the baby of
the girl [this is as low as self-contempt can get]." "Why, so. Being gone, I
am a man."
In his rage and frustration he orders the extermination of Macduff's
family:
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line.
"He has no children," is Macduff's reaction when he hears the news. Lady
Macduff says when the murderer approaches,
I remember now I am in this world, where to do harm is often laudable, to
do good sometime accounted dangerous folly [an utter perversion of
values]. Why, then, alas, do I put up that womanly defense?
The young and sensitive Malcolm has had more than he can take and raves:
Nay, had I power, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.
At this point Shakespeare introduces an important but often neglected
interlude. To check his raving, Macduff replies to Malcolm that his father and
mother were a "most sainted" royal pair.
Malcolm then says: "I am yet unknown to woman, never was forsworn,
scarcely have coveted what was my own" (neither sex nor greed had spoiled
him).
The doctor then introduces talk of Edward the Confessor, the reigning
king of England: "At his touch, such sanctity hath heaven given his hand,
[those with maladies] presently amend."
Malcolm follows with this observation:
A most miraculous work in this good king. . .
to the succeeding royalty he leaves
The healing benediction, With this strange virtue
He hath the heavenly gift of prophecy,
And sundry blessings hang about his throne
That speak him full of grace.
This scene sets forth the conditions upon which power may be enjoyed without
satanic corruption, only by those who are totally unworldly; for one in a
position of power the only alternative to becoming devilish in this world is
to be holy.
In the same scene, when Macduff learns the news, Malcolm says, "Dispute
it like a man."
Macduff replies:
I shall do so,
But must also feel it as a man.
For the Macbeths, on the other hand, to be a man was to have no feelings. What
does the lady care about such things?
Fie, my lord! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear
who knows it, when none can our power to account?
Get enough power and you can forget about things like feelings and
conscience, what can anybody do to you?
As it turns out, Macbeth's undoing is his contempt of women; the witches,
"lying like truth," have told him to do whatever he pleases "since none of
woman born can harm Macbeth." What's humanity to him? And he keeps harping on
that: no mere woman's sons can get the best of him!
What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? What's he
That was not born of woman? Such a one.
Am I to fear, or none.
But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn,
Brandished by man that's of a woman born.
So everything collapses when it is plain that the sisters have played him a
rare trick:
Accursed be the tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cowed my better part of man!
In the last scene the new king calls for punishing "the cruel ministers of
this dead butcher and his fiendlike Queen." A woman unsexed as she was can no
longer be called human.
With the rise of commercialism at the end of the Middle Ages came a
feeling of liberation, a romantic release for love, and a free field for
acquisition. The relationship of the sexes became both romantic and
calculating.
From Shakespeare's and Moliere's comedies down to Agatha Christie, there
is nothing wrong with the beloved's expectations of ten thousand dollars a
year. Gilbert and Sullivan got away with exposing the deep and pious Victorian
situation by making great fun of its absurdity: "I'd laugh my pride to scorn
in union holy," says the fair maid, perfectly willing to forget rank and
wealth and marry a poor sailor for love alone, on one condition: "Were he more
highly born, or I more lowly." For inevitably it was not true love that
triumphed, as sentimental audiences made themselves think, but the ten
thousand a year.
Actually the situation had not changed for thousands of years. The
standard plot of modern comedy was that of the New Comedy, which Plautus and
Terence got from Menander, where the obstacle to true love is overcome not by
sacrifice, but by the manipulation of a clever servant who gulls a rich old
man or woman, or, even more delightfully, by the discovery of a token that
proves after many years that the poor youth or maiden was nobly born after all
and is the heir to a handsome fortune: so now they can get married because
they are both rich!
And so we come down to the present-day sitcom (where we can laugh freely
at everything but the money) and the heavy prime-time show (crime, of course,
with single-minded dedication to really big money heavily spiced with the
super status symbol: plenty of expensive sex).
One of my daughters has a little book with these words on the cover: "The
College Survival Kit: Fifty-One Proven Strategies for Success in Today's
Competitive College World. Survive and succeed, Don't take chances with your
college career." Survival, success, competitive, career, the dictionary
defines strategy as "deception practiced on an enemy." The word is well
chosen. No deception is too shameful to use against an enemy, and whatever the
game, your competitor, even the reluctant customer, is the enemy. What a
seedbed of mischief this is! The result of this philosophy in terms of human
values has recently been the subject of numerous studies. One of the pioneer
studies was S. Whyte's Organization Man, which told us how the company man
would never think of wooing or marrying anyone not approved of by his
superiors. So much for true love.
A recent summary of many of these investigations is Michael Maccoby's The
Gatnesman. The section called "The Head and the Heart" is relevant to our
discussion: "A corporate president remarked that if he thought of one word to
describe his experience with managers over a period of thirty-five years, that
word would be fear." (There is the cloven hoof again!) "Why are corporate
managers fearful?" Mr. Maccoby asks, and he discovers that if the corporate
individual could penetrate to the causes of this paralyzing fear and anxiety,
he would find careerism. (Can we improve on Satan's formula as a definition
for that? Careerism is the determination to reign in hell rather than serve in
heaven.) "From the moment a person starts treating his life as a career, worry
is his constant companion. . . . Careerism results not only in constant
anxiety, but also in an underdeveloped heart. . . . The careerist constantly
betrays himself, since he must ignore idealistic, compassionate, and
courageous impulses that might jeopardize his career."
"Perfect love casts out all fear," said the Lord, but who wants that if
it jeopardizes one's career? Satan's promise to split Adam and Eve was
accomplished when God declared, "My people have sold themselves for gold and
silver."
The few scattered case studies introduced here are merely straws, but
they show where the fatal wind is ever blowing. Thinking back, what was
Satan's express purpose in inaugurating a rule of blood and horror, power and
gain on this earth? It was to breach that wall of enmity that protected "the
seed of the woman" from his direct attack. Only the covenants of Adam and
Abraham and the church of God can overcome it. Though nothing is to be gained
by men and women in fighting for the whip handle, that disgraceful tussle will
continue until God cuts it short in righteousness.
So one must choose between patriarchy and matriarchy until the Zion of
God is truly established upon the earth. It is that old Devil's dilemma, in
which we are asked to take sides with Gog or Magog as his means of decoying us
away from our true dedication to that celestial order established in the
beginning.
1. Nibley, Hugh, The Roman Games as the Survival of an Archaic
Year-Cult (Berkeley: University of California, 1939).
2. Graves, Robert, The Greek Myths (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955)
1:28.
"Patriarchy and Matriarchy" was first delivered on February 1, 1980, to the
annual women's conference at Brigham Young University.
Yesterday I was in Disneyland, and that gives you different views of
things. One thing was very impressive: all these exhibits you see about the
structure of the universe and their accompanying historical views are drawn
from just one source. We have but two sources: written and unwritten. By
unwritten I mean the "facts" of science, whether reported in writing or not.
By written records, I mean the accumulation of human written records that has
been going on for thousands of years. It's immense, it's very valuable, and
the contents are quite as "factual" as the other, whether intentionally or
not; but would you believe it, nobody ever considers the written record in
that light. I'm not talking about special historical studies, these very
interesting things done on early American history, the frontier and so
forth, or glimpses back into the Middle Ages and the like. How can you
consider the whole vast body of historical and literary material as a single
writing? What will it tell us about the world we live in? We are all guilty of
underestimating and largely ignoring the larger written record. This
collection of written documents is one of the great spectacles the world has
to offer. It would be a wonderful thing if Walt Disney were alive now to do
something with it, and I am sure he would leap at the chance.
The documents first started coming out in great numbers with the Council
of Constance (1414-1418) and finally with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Vast numbers of ancient documents that had been reposing in the East and in
various places for a long time suddenly poured into Europe. They were
collected and organized in great ducal, royal, and imperial libraries,
sometimes by very rich individuals. They captured the imagination of the age.
Owners would have them organized in great rotundas, tier upon tier of
knowledge, organized chronologically and topically so that you would be
completely surrounded with books on all sides, round and round, mounting
gallery after gallery almost out of sight, in the form of a huge planetarium
of written human knowledge. But unfortunately for the books, about this same
time the Book of Nature was discovered.
Bacon, Galileo, and Scaliger are strictly contemporaries. They all at the
same time discovered the Book of Nature, which is much easier to read, in a
way. The men who could read it would become the great geniuses of the
world, the Galileos, the Keplers, the Copernicuses, Toracellis, and so on. But
the average man could read it just as well as anybody else. After all, the
beginnings of geology were simply by a Scotch farmer, James Sutton, who went
out and started guessing about the rocks on the beach near his home. And
anyone could play that game. On the other hand, the written records were read
mostly by dunderheads. You didn't have to have any genius at all to read them,
but you had to have training. You had to know or pretend to know the
languages, and while that didn't take any brains, it did take patience and a
body, as the saying goes, to read the things. The result was that everybody
wanted to play, the game of reading the Book of Nature, because everyone's
guess was as good as anybody else's; and you can guess like mad. So they
completely ignored the written record from then on.
Joseph Justus Scaliger, who died in 1608, was the last man ever to make a
serious attempt to read what the written human record said. It covers
thousands of years. The human race has documented its doings for a long time,
and no one pays any attention to the record. Nobody in the world does that
anymore. Oh, it's a librarian's paradise: we classify, we photograph, we
reproduce, we store and preserve, and we transfer. We can do all the tricks
electronics can do today, but nobody reads the records. Nobody knows what is
actually in these books. I mean this literally. A few specialists may consider
documents in one area or in another, but who knows what the record as a whole
has to tell us? It's a most interesting thing the way these records have been
shamefully pushed aside. It would take a man of Walt Disney's genius to
dramatize that, to bring it to our attention. (I wish there were someone who
could do it.) The actual written record is terrific.
Every book imparts information on two levels, what the author intends to
tell you, and what he tells you unintentionally. The unintentional is the
interesting thing, it is more important. For example, Cicero wrote hundreds of
letters that we still have, all sorts of things about himself, telling us he
was the greatest man in the world. In fact, he was really telling us that he
was one of the greatest nincompoops who ever lived, a fool! This is what he
tells us unintentionally. Intentionally he gives us one story, unintentionally
another.
Now any document can be treated just like a fossil, just as impersonally,
just as scientifically as anything else. Books fell into disrepute for this
reason: people would say, "Look, these are just the musty superstitions of a
past age; let's forget them." These were actually a drag on the market, very
unscientific. It's true, people who wrote them were usually not very
scientific, though sometimes they were. But in many cases, they knew a great
deal more than we credit them with. Giorgio de Santillana is writing a great
deal on that. He shows that the Egyptians knew more than we have ever given
them credit for. Levi-Strauss, an anthropologist, has written an astonishing
book on that quite recently, how much more our "primitives" have really known
all along than we've been giving them credit for. We had the idea that since
people lived long ago and before our science, their ideas must be
superstitious. We don't read the books for the ideas that people intended to
convey, but for what they tell us unintentionally all over the place.
Any page of any letter will give you all sorts of things about the times,
circumstances, the person who wrote it, whether the person intends to tell you
that or not. And that's why we want to read these books. If we view all the
books in the world as fossils, they can tell us much. As fossils, they're
astoundingly perfect. In them we have not just boney, broken structures, but
also the flesh; we even have the life, the very thoughts of the creature, left
imprinted for our inspection. We don't have to fill in the whole story from
our own imaginations. It's because scientists are denied that privilege that
they are impatient with our books. They want a situation in which they can
pretty well call the tune. But books hamper and confine freedom of invention.
(You see, what I could do, what I have done before, is to show a lot of slides
of these documents. They would mean nothing to you. I could show you rocks; I
could show you pictures of star spectrums; I could show you ferns and other
plants and fossils, and you could guess about them as well as I. A person who
really knew something about them could be very instructive, couldn't he? But I
show you a picture of a document, it means nothing. It wouldn't take too much
study for it to begin to mean something, but if you haven't tried that we
might just as well be showing nothing at all. So there's no point in showing
slides with this sort of thing, is there?) This is one of the reasons why the
books have been shoved aside and ignored. People can't get at them, can't
"open" them. As a spectacle, they are quite a thing. But what is in them? What
do they actually say? I tell you again, nobody knows, because nobody reads
them; nobody knows what is in the records of the past, though they are
enormous today. Someone in Europe is now making a microfilm card catalog of
all of the books that have been printed since the invention of printing. There
are only twelve and a half million. There are almost that many books inside
the Widener Library today. You don't have to read them all, but it's
astonishing how little has been read of certain areas.
Now comes an interesting question: If you were to read these written
records, would they give you the same picture of the world that the scientific
transcripts give us? In the scientific fields the Book of Nature has been
read; it gives us one picture, and these written books give us another
picture. Remember, reading them both impersonally, we're viewing them both as
phenomena: do they tell us the same things? No they don't. They give a totally
different picture of what was going on in the past, the so-called scientific
view. This is very good news, because until now we have been told there is
only one possible valid picture of the world, the picture science gives us at
the moment. Many scientists are getting over that now, men like Karl Popper
and Thomas Kuhn. People like that are giving us a very different picture,
showing us that it's always changing-which we should have known all along
anyway. We shouldn't be stuck with just one picture at one image, even if we
are laymen and can't understand the scientists. They say, "Well, you have to
take it, this is it; this is it." That's the voice of authority speaking: "I'm
sorry we'll just have to settle for that." But it hasn't been particularly
good news, because in recent years the picture's become a rather dismal one,
and many scientists have been talking about that. Quite a number say the
picture's not only dismal but false in many respects. There's something
radically wrong with it. It doesn't match the real world we live in, certainly
not in all points. Then why do we accept it? Because, as I say, we've been
told there's no alternative. Many scientists have said that about evolution.
It's a very defective tool, but they must use it because it's the only one
they have. So we've been left with but one picture of the world, and all the
time there's the other one from the books. I don't say it will give you a true
picture of things or anything like that; I will say there might be something
very wonderful if you went and looked. Yet nobody goes and looks. It's just
too much trouble.
Since World War II, some very new and important additions have been made
to the library. We are now buried under an avalanche of manuscripts. We don't
even pretend to read them anymore. We have given up trying. We have reached
the saturation point and don't even know what's in the books. They could be
full of great surprises. I'm sure we all know about the Dead Sea Scrolls and
the Khenoboskeion (that is, the Nag Hammadi) texts, found in Egypt at the same
time and forming the earliest Christian library; the Bodmer Papyri; the
Mandaean and Manichaean texts discovered recently; before them, slightly, the
Chester Beatty Papyri, the Odes of Solomon, and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. We can
go back to the great library collections of the Nineteenth Century, from
Babylonian, Assyrian, and Egyptian libraries.
What can we do with all these? We try different approaches. Simply to
describe them, when they were found, and under what circumstances, would take
many hours. You would then know the books were there, but you wouldn't know
what was in them. We can make some generalizations about them. They're not
found as separate documents but in batches, whole libraries turn up. You don't
just find a document here and a document there. There's a great flood of them,
found in great collections, and their value and significance can be gradually
appreciated only because what they contain is quite radically different from
what we have thought about certain things before. Remember, people haven't
been studying the document picture, so when some of these were found just
after World War II, they left everybody rather embarrassed. Only a handful of
people in the world could read the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi texts
on sight. Then these documents called for a reevaluation of all the other
stuff. The entire library has to be reevaluated. When we go back and look, we
find many things we'd overlooked, many things we didn't even know were there.
We had got the whole thing wrong in the first place anyway and are going to
have to do the whole thing over, because of these new discoveries. This has
been very embarrassing. We could describe the contents of one or two, we could
take one or two really good examples, such as the Serekh Scroll or the
Apocryphon of John or of James, and go into them in some detail. But then we
miss the cumulative impact. There are not one or two but hundreds of these
documents, and they match each other. So what do we do? Well, the best thing
is to look at some of the teachings found in all of these documents that are
very different from anything that anybody expected.
Why are we able to accept these? Why haven't we been able to sweep them
under the rug, as we've done before? Because of the circumstances of their
discovery. Because these sources are so new and unspoiled, men have been
willing to accept from them what they have refused in the past to accept from
the other sources. The earlier discoveries were just as sensational when they
were discovered, but they came one by one, and people were able to sort of
push them aside. You can't do that now, because the documents are very old,
they've been preserved in their purity and nobody had got at them, and they're
not copies of copies of copies, as everything else is. (All of our classical
literature was copied so many times that we don't have a manuscript that's
anywhere near the original.) But these new finds are the originals, and we've
never had anything like this happen before. These are libraries that were
hidden to come forth in their purity in the due time of the Lord. In fact, the
people who hid them were aware that they were hiding them for a long term, a
long rest, to come forth at a later time, so that when they would come forth
they would not be distorted and changed.
Now they've come forth, and we've been willing to accept things from them
that we'd never have taken from anybody else before. Heretofore, conventional
Christianity and Judaism have exercised strict control over documents as
they've been discovered. They have decided what's to be admitted as orthodox
and what's to be rejected, "This is Gnostic," or something else suspect. You
can't do that anymore. We have only to let the Jews and Christians speak for
themselves, because their documents are much older, much purer. We cannot
force them to say what they don't want to say, as we've always been able to do
before.
A good example of a teaching propounded in early Christian and Jewish
documents, a teaching we've been forced to accept against our will, is
cosmism. Cosmism was an idea always present in these early sources, and it
made them rather offensive. It is the hallmark of early Christianity, of what
Jerome calls primitive Christianity, the kind he didn't like. He said the
church had to get rid of it. "I will admit this is the teaching of the early
church," he confessed, but "it's rather embarrassing to us. We've outgrown
that. We're much too intelligent for this sort of thing now." The doctrine
accepted in early Christianity was the literal interpretation of things, which
Carl Schmidt, the greatest documents student of the last century, has labeled
cosmism.
The idea is that somehow or other the physical cosmos is involved in the
plan of salvation. It has been there all the time, and because we are living
in it, we are part of it. It was the prevailing doctrine of the University of
Alexandria, and it prevailed with tremendous authority. At that time,
everybody was "spiritual," everything allegorical. The influence of
neo-Platonism was very strong. The idea was that anything spiritual or
anything divine had nothing to do with the physical world whatever, because
God is pure spirit, and matter is vile; any matter, anything that is physical,
is vile, a mistake that shouldn't exist at all. It was a natural reflection of
the moral feelings of the people of the time. People couldn't even conceive of
a normal existence that wasn't grossly immoral. Because things got very bad,
they thought of the flesh as necessarily vicious; therefore, God could have
nothing to do with it. The idea that the physical cosmos could have anything
whatsoever to do with our existence before we came here and hereafter was
regarded with the utmost abhorrence. But whether they liked it or not, the
early doctors faced certain basic doctrines that embarrassed them greatly and
confused them, so that as Origen says, it made him so ashamed of himself that
he almost died with humiliation when he thought of the idea that Jesus was
born as a person, a human being, a little baby that cried and fussed and had
to be changed, and all that sort of thing. He said it was a mystery that was
beyond the apostles, beyond even the angels; no one could understand how such
a thing was possible: the idea that here we are in a physical universe, a
physical world, and physical bodies, a physical creation that God created.
When those church fathers talked about God to the pagans or anyone else,
the great epithet was that he was the Creator. The creator of what? This
physical world. What an awful thought! It actually sickened the doctors of
Alexandria to have to face up to the fact that God created the physical world,
that Jesus came, that God came and was incarnated in the physical body and
then hereafter provides a physical resurrection, because there is no other
kind of resurrection (Jerome did say there is a spiritual resurrection, the
only one that counts). But they couldn't get around the fact that there is
physical concomitance in things. It greatly embarrassed them. Now these early
documents being discovered are full of the doctrine. They tell us a lot about
it.
The doctrine of creation from nothing is one example. God supposedly made
the world out of nothing, ex nihilo. This was a necessary premise, to avoid
the taint of cosmism, the idea that God worked with matter, processed it,
adapted it, and used it as a workman, as an artisan, as a super scientist, or
something like that. The popular idea was that God merely has a thought,
merely utters a word, and it is. That's that. Something completely and fully
organized. H. A. Brongers, a great Jesuit writing now, says that God just
thinks and all is there at once, organized, complete in all its forms. The
idea of God working matter, using something already there, is utterly
horrifying, because that deprives him of all his divinity. It involves him
with the physical world.
Moslems got on the same track too. But they have not got very far
because, as Fred Hoyle says, "I challenge you to make three meaningful
statements about anything without some reference to the Physical Universe."
When you start out with these basic principles of Christianity, the creation,
the incarnation, the resurrection, which are all physical, how are you going
to get around them? There's really nothing wrong, but Justin Martyr, the
earliest Christian apologist, writing three hundred years before Origen,
emphatically says, in the Apology, the early Christians did not believe in
creation out of nothing, but believed that when God created the world, He
organized matter. This is the theme these new documents have a great deal to
say about. Scholars have recently been writing articles on this theme. Richter
and H. F. Weiss, for example, in a number of recent studies, point out that it
is not until we get to the doctrines of the church in the Fourth Century,
wholly committed to the prevailing teachings of the school, that we hear of
creation out of nothing. Before that century the early Christians didn't
believe in that at all. They believed that God created the universe out of
stuff, and that he organized it. How he did this is one of the most intriguing
aspects of the documents we are talking about.
There are the Nag Hammadi manuscripts (Nag Hammadi is Arabic for the old
monastery the Greeks called Khenoboskeion, about sixty miles north of Thebes
where the Nile takes a big bend, about ten miles off the river in the eastern
desert). In the same year and under very much the same circumstances in which
the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, a peasant, while digging for fertilizer,
found a special cache just like the Dead Sea Scrolls. It contained thirteen
volumes, beautifully bound in leather. They weren't scrolls at all, but
volumes, marvelously preserved, as if they had been written yesterday. They
were regular books with pages, whose wrappings and bindings we still have.
These leather bindings contained forty-nine different works, five of them
repeated works. One of these thirteen volumes is in the Jung Museum in Zurich.
(The museum may have to give it back to the Egyptian government. There's a big
fuss going on about it now.) The other twelve are in the Old Cairo Coptic
Museum in Cairo. These contain forty-nine works, written and preserved and put
away in an early church, many of them going back to the First Century A.D.,
others to the Fourth Century A.D. Most of them are Coptic translations of
Greek documents that are lost today. They have started to come out now. As
with the Dead Sea Scrolls, there was a lot of political and other pressure to
keep them from coming out.
This library is a marvelous thing. Van Unnik says that the books were
written in a little local country church in Egypt before the apostasy ever
took place, before there was any Gnosticism. They represent in certain ways
the pure teachings of the Early Church. (We won't discuss this problem here.)
These documents are very numerous and can be correlated with others, for
example, the Mandaean texts.
Especially through the efforts of a woman called Ethel Drower (who's in
her eighties now), who spent many years among the Mandaeans of southern
Mesopotamia, we know something about the very secretive Mandaean religion, a
last holdover of the people who came from the Dead Sea. Their traditions and
their ancient writings describe them as possibly leaving the Qumran people
(the Dead Sea Scroll group) at the fall of Jerusalem. They first went up to
Haran, then down the river. Some two thousand or so Mandaean people remain
today. They have their own language and preserve the marvelous records they've
kept for all this time. The Mandaeans went down to Qumran in the time of
Joseph ben Rekha (they call themselves Rekhabites). He arrived just before
Lehi went out into the desert. People were doing this sort of thing in Book of
Mormon days, going out into the desert to live the gospel in its purity,
setting up their own churches and communities, "the church in the
wilderness", then practicing their baptisms. These doctrines were taught in
those communities. The Mandaean writings relate very closely to the Nag
Hammadi, and to the Dead Sea Scrolls people, too, because the Mandaeans came
from there.
Up on the Tigris, quite far north, were found in 1906 the forty-two Odes
of Solomon, viewed as the earliest, most valuable Christian collection of
writings known. Lo and behold, one of the Odes turns up in the Dead Sea
Scrolls and in the Nag Hammadi collection way down in Egypt, up the Nile at
Thebes.
The point is that all these writings come together. We have a large
collection from the East, a large collection from Qumran, from Palestine, and
a huge collection from southern Mesopotamia, all discovered since World War
II, all sitting together, showing early isolated Christian and Jewish
communities, all teaching very much the same thing.
For all of these people, matter was important; they weren't ashamed of it
at all. Peter says in the Clementine Recognitions, "There's absolutely no evil
in matter as such." As Eusebius's Preparation for the Gospel explains, "Matter
is not the cause of evil." And the great Origen, the earliest and by far the
greatest Christian theologian, who lived in the Third Century, says, "I cannot
explain it, but it is important nonetheless to understand that this world is
not pure incorporeal ideas." (That was a tremendous concession, a shocking
thing, for a man of Alexandria to make. He had been born and brought up at the
University of Alexandria. His father was a professor there, and full of
incorporeal notions. All his life Origen fought with these two doctrines
because he was very honest and upright, yet he was completely indoctrinated in
the teachings of Alexandria.)
One of the very recently discovered documents says, "God the Father of
all our eternal bodies, brings about the resurrection of the flesh through
members of the Godhead; do not be afraid of the world of the physis. The
living spirit clothes itself with the body of elements, through which it is
enabled to carry out its works in the worlds." The creation means matter and
organization: men are to accept matter and not be ashamed of it. (There are
dozens of such quotations from different writings, all on the same subject.)
Creation means organization of the elements, as the so-called Codex Brucianus
explains. Manuscript No. 96 says that first, there is matter. So what do you
do with it? You organize it to create things. God is aware of it and makes
good use of it. His activity and concern are everywhere evident in number and
measure, because if you are going to get any kind of creation, any kind of
life at all, you're going to have consistent patterns, number and measure.
This is taken as evidence of an organizing mind, an organizing activity.
Regular divisions of time and place mark an ordered universe. Cosmos means
order. The Pistis Sophia, a very important early work, says, "There is a place
afforded for everything, a topos." (Some Coptics use Greek words every once in
a while because they don't have any that express exactly the idea of topos, a
place for a certain thing to be performed.) There is a numbering of souls for
each world, and a dispensation is not completed until that number has been
fulfilled. Every soul stays in its appointed topos until it has fulfilled the
mission and task appointed for it in that place. "God's plan sets times and
seasons," says the Apocryphon of John. The Dead Sea Scrolls are obsessed with
the idea of the times of iniquity, a time allotted for Satan to tempt mankind,
and times of suffering of various kinds. And there is the cycle: you mustn't
hasten the time and you mustn't delay the time, it is always a warning to us.
There are times of suffering and times of punishment. All times are exactly
prescribed from the beginning: they belong to a plan. Time and matter and
space are all organized. It's well understood that all this setting of times
is for our nature and for the purpose of our testing in this world. (It's only
a temporary arrangement.) It is a characteristic of this particular world. For
God there is no time; at least He doesn't use our time at all. The documents
make this very, very clear.
The Manichaean Psalm Book, a very early and important writing, says on
the Creation that if you ever set yourself to build, let the measuring come
first, for if you build without a measuring device in your hand, your building
will be crooked. Measurement is the very essence of creation.
The whole Creation, says Clement of Alexandria, who was the teacher of
Origen, the first Christian philosopher, is to be understood as the imposing
of an inner order on outer material, a progressive organizing of material from
the center out. You build the structure inside; what you have outside is
background material that you take into the structure as you build. And this is
the way even Clement of Alexandria, in the Stromata 2, describes creation: It
is the imposing of an inner order on outer material, progressively built out
this way. It is all organization and synthesis.
The Apocalypse of Abraham, a very early Jewish work and one that has most
interesting stories of Abraham, matches remarkably our book of Abraham in many
points. God is hailed as the one who brings order out of confusion whenever
worlds are demolished, ever preparing and renewing worlds for the righteous.
Codex Brucianus says, "Creation is organization." But God is, by definition,
the one who brings order into the confusion of the universe, ever preparing
and renewing worlds for the righteous. But it is not enough to arrange matter.
The matter is here, and when you create, you organize it. But that isn't
enough. You merely produce an inert structure, and structure in itself isn't
divine. Structure can't produce anything in itself. You can organize your
molecules or your electrons and change them into any order you want, but,
according to these people, there must be something else.
Incidentally, these authors sound very much like our science fiction
writers. While looking up some science fiction books in the bookstore the
other day, I jotted down some titles, and you'll notice they all have certain
things in common. "Now wait a minute," you may object. "Aren't you getting
rather close to science fiction here?" Yes, this does get remarkably close to
science fiction. These include all sorts of theorizing on how the physical
cosmos was organized, and some of these suggestions are extremely ingenious.
They show remarkable insight, astonishing knowledge. Consider a few recent
titles: Bow Down to Nul, the worship of Satan; Ten Years to Doomsday, the
doomsday motif; The End of Eternity, Second Foundation, worlds founded again;
Billennium, obviously from the notion of millennium; The Burning World,
destruction by fire; Passport to Eternity, Worlds for the Taking, Boodry's
Inferno, Beyond the Galactic Rim, Possible Worlds, Three Stigmata of Palmer
Eldritch, Trans Finite Man, Stranger in a Strange Land, Bowman's World, Earth
Abides, Those Who Watch, Recalled to Life. What do all these have in common?
These ideas are basically scriptural and apocryphal, taken from the traditions
of the Bible. This is surprising, isn't it? Why should these derivatives be
more interesting than the originals? Why don't we read the apocrypha and the
Bible instead? Look what the Christian world has done. It has emasculated the
whole thing, denatured it. Till now these themes have been just spiritual or
symbolic things. We find the literal view more interesting. Why? They're
fiction, but they're science fiction. There's a possibility that such things
could be true. When you bring the word "science" in, things become
conceivable, and as long as there is a slight, remote possibility that such a
world could exist, it rather interests you. But you read the Bible and say,
"Oh, yes, but that's an abstraction. That's not even fourth dimensional." See
what they have done to the scriptures?
How do you know these scriptures were originally meant to be taken
literally? Any history, any scientific structure, can be interpreted
allegorically, but no one goes to the trouble to invent really good history to
have it denatured as allegory or symbolism. Most Bible stories weren't made
up; scripture wasn't composed for the purpose of being allegorized, and it was
certainly not invented as an allegory or as a symbol. That was read into it
later. Until the theologians of the schools came along, it never occurred to
anyone to do that. Remember what the doctors of the Fourth Century called the
early Christians: "primitive," and that has a note of contempt in it. They
call their stories old wives' tales, because the Christians really believed in
these things. They called the Christians "literalists" and made great fun of
them. (That is the word Jerome used.) The new interpreters became the
"spiritualizers." They understood all these things in a spiritual sense,
uncontaminated by the idea of a physical world. But if you go back to the
early Christians, you find they accepted things physically, and that puts
everything on a different footing. It makes the real thing more interesting
than science fiction. Science fiction is only rather a horrible aberration,
but it's much more optimistic, and you might even say more convincing, than a
dematerialized future.
Let's see what people have to say about the question now. They now admit
that matter is there, and that it's organized; but it's not enough to arrange
matter with order and system. Such matter remains, for all its pretty
patterns, inert, background stuff. Without life, matter is inert and helpless,
these early writers say. It must be improved by the action of light. (The
creators have a special force which the early writers call light, not light
exactly as we understand it.) Structure is not enough. Whenever the active
principle is withdrawn, matter at once falls back into its original, lifeless,
inert condition. We think of the inert gases, like argon and xenon and helium
and so forth. When they are activated, they glow. As soon as you take the
activating away, they are nothing. It is the same with all matter. It must be
touched by some activating force, according to the ancients.
The records call it the "spark," (spinther) a word that occurs numerous
times. The spark is mentioned throughout, and it is what makes the difference.
Whether you are in the Mandaean or the Manichean, whether in the Dead Sea
Scrolls or in the Coptic Documents from Egypt, all take up the idea of the
spark, because the spark can leap the gap. The spark is that which comes from
one world to another. The spark is also that which animates at a distance.
This vitalizing principle is everywhere referred to as the "spark," without
which, says the so-called Second Coptic Work, "there is no awareness." It's
all right to have an electric eye in the supermarket open the door for you.
You say, "Thank you very much," but there is no consciousness there. It hasn't
been polite or anything else. Without this spark, the mechanism doesn't work,
but still there is no awareness. You have to be aware of something. Unless the
electric eye is actually aware of you, there is no mind at all. It's a gadget.
There is a lot of this theme in the Cabala. The Jews adopted it. In the
Cabalistic literature are the Hasidic forms that preserve the old teachings
among the Jews, just as certain out-of-the-way Christian sects preserve, sort
of in the dark, secretly, underground, many of these teachings well into the
Middle Ages. Some of them emerged only lately. But the Cabalistic teachings
about how God's intelligence unites with matter to form life, to form a unity,
is depicted in the Cabala as "God is in everything." The Gospel of Truth, a
very important writing (published at great expense), the first of the Coptic
documents to come out in 1956, says much the same thing: "Unity engulfs matter
within itself like a flame." It isn't enough to build your structure from the
center out; you must engulf it with a life principle, engulf it like a flame.
Instead of an absolute separation of matter and spirit, an all-or-nothing
arrangement like that of the Gnostics and Neoplatonists whom the church
fathers followed, the earliest Christian apologist, Aristides, explained that
everything is a mixture of the two. To produce a new thing, you must have the
original matter, and you must have the spirit to infuse it. Otherwise, you
won't get results, because structure alone won't do it.
Melito, one of the early Christian fathers, says the same thing, that all
the world is moved as a body is moved by the spirit, so all the world must be
moved by some animating spirit itself, not just our bodies, but everything.
When this vitalizing principle touches matter, according to the Psalm of
Thomas, one of the new Syriac manuscripts, "consciousness" is expanded. "The
worlds of darkness gathered and beheld his brightness. They breathed his
fragrance. They orbited about him, and bowed and knew him and worshipped him."
It is this implanting of the mind with the thought of life that works within
the elements to bring about the Creation. The Berlin (Mandaean) Papyrus says,
"At the same time, the great thought came to the elements in united wisdom,
spirit joining with matter."
But this animating principle still isn't enough. Though joined with
spirit, matter is not spirit; it constantly undergoes processing. The matter
itself is just part of the story. It can be imbued with the spirit, but it
will always change. It is always undergoing processing and changing. Only
progeny is eternal, only sons go on forever, says the Gospel of Philip. That
was the plan of heaven. Part of Satan's plan was to have a static world that
would not change. It would not only be perfect, it would be static in its
physical structure as well. But the plan agreed on was that worlds would
constantly come into existence and pass away, and that the process would never
cease. Matter would always be processed again and again, and this would go on,
whereas this same writing says that only sons are eternal. Sonship, progeny,
goes on forever. So that while the other elements become serviceable to the
needs of the spirit, as the Gospel of Philip puts it, there is no permanence
in matter; it always undergoes change as worlds come into existence and pass
away. Only progeny is eternal. All the physis, all physical nature, all plasm,
all organized things, all structure, is interdependent and will return to its
old roots, but the root is not destroyed.
A passage in the Apocalypse of Abraham is very good on this point.
Abraham sees what's going on inside of a star. A very exciting picture is
displayed. (Like the process of conversion from one element to another, helium
to hydrogen, then to the carbons; the cycle goes on.) Here is how he describes
it. He's taken there by an angel. Abraham has been praying, wanting to know
how the stars were made, so the angel actually takes him. He says his spirit
left his body. He didn't go there physically, but he saw it all, and he was
completely bowled over. He saw an indescribably mighty light, and within the
light was a tremendous fire, and within that was a host of mighty forms that
are constantly seething and exchanging with each other; they constantly change
their shape as they move, altering themselves, one exchanging with another.
Abraham frankly doesn't know what's going on, so he says to the angel,
"Why have you brought me here? I can't see a thing. I've become weak. I think
I'm out of my mind." (I think we would too if we got too near to a star! A red
giant, a white giant, even a white dwarf, would scare you enough!) The angel
tells him to stick close and not be afraid. But when later they were both
wrapped in something like flame and heard a voice like many rushing waters,
even the angel took precaution. Abraham wanted to fall on his face, but he
could not, because "there was no ground or earth anywhere to fall on." He
couldn't even fall on his face. (He was awfully glad to get back home again.)
Abraham was taken to see the chemical changes going on inside the stars.
The most useful property of matter is its plasticity. According to these
writings, it can be adapted. It submits to handling. Eusebius points that out
in his Preparation, "You can't make everybody in the church responsible for
sinful man in his sinful nature." Physical matter is just a tool we use,
something we just put to our purposes. Matter can't help itself, it's inert.
Remember, man is to act and not to be acted upon. (2 Nephi 2:26.) Eusebius
says, "Matter submits to handling. It can't by itself be the cause of evil."
We simply put it to use, the uses we want. It's always being reformed,
reorganized, renewed, in accordance with the law of plenitude. Nothing is
wasted. There's no space where there isn't something. And if you're not using
it for one thing, you can use it for another. And then there's the principle
of multiple use, so that worlds can be used by spirits of various levels at
the same time. All this is very nicely explained in these writings.
And if it is to be reused, so to speak, it must be melted down. I have
left out some of the interesting quotations that talk about the "trough," the
process in which matter melts down. It seems that the users have to get it
orbiting in the trough. And in this trough it is selected out, certain
elements being drawn out when and where they are needed. At certain
temperatures they do this or that, and so forth. Here's what the Pistis Sophia
says about it: It has to be decontaminated, melted down, then purified.
There's a lot about decontamination. The action of the light on matter always
has a purifying effect, whether for the first time or whether it's being
reused. Indeed, there's no such thing as used or old matter, since by the
action of the spark or of the light upon it, the matter always becomes
renewed. "Let matter rejoice in the light, for the light will leave no matter
unpurified." The "treasure," or the physical substance used in making
anything, must be taken from some other treasure. You don't create it out of
nothing. (This principle is also mentioned in Codex Brucianus 96, chapter 45.)
The various elements must first be separated, cleansed, and reclassified.
"When the flame engulfs substance to form a new unity," the Gospel of Truth
says, "then obscurity becomes light, death becomes life. And the old jars are
broken to become new." In the Clementine Recognitions, Peter explains the
heavens to Clement: "The perfect form," says the philosopher, "is the egg. But
the eggshell exists only to be thrown away, to be crushed, to be used up. It
is just a step to using it in something else. So it is in the physical
universe, in the world." As things go on and on, all the worlds pass away to
make way for new ones. The egg, this perfect form, instead of being
contemplated with utter satisfaction forever after, exists merely to be
crushed, stomped upon, and used again, eaten by the chickens to make good egg
shells the next time. The figure of breaking up the old jars to make new ones
is common. Another like figure exists: "God took dead bones," the Odes of
Solomon says, "and covered them with bodies." They were inert. He gave them
energy for life. Things were brought to corruption by God, but the cycle of
corruption is not disaster. Death isn't a terrible mistake, but rather a part
of the eternal plan. Everything physical must go through this change. Nothing
is to be permanent, nothing fixed. There are other aspects of permanence in
our life, but not this one. And so corruption was brought about by God,
something the doctors of the church would never consider. Things were brought
to corruption by God that everything might be dissolved and then renewed, thus
founded on a rock!
So, we're founded on a firm principle of continuing existence, but it
must be corrupted first to be dissolved, and then renewed. This corruption
shall put on incorruption, as Paul says. Accordingly, every new creation
leaves behind the matter of its old aeon, its old age, its old period, its old
cycle.
From the beginning, the elements were purified by the holy living bearers
of life, and from the first contest they were mixed with a background material
and have remained so ever since. Also, when the poison or contamination of old
matter has been removed, the stuff becomes sterile. It's pure, but sterile.
Again, you have to do something to make it live again. It has to be
re-energized, and Peter actually uses the word energia. Matter has to have
more energy put back into it again, now that it has been purified. It's ready
to be used again. It's sterile. You have got the poison and the contamination
out of it, but now it has to be energized all over again. When old worlds pass
away, a general state of confusion is passed through, so you can organize a
new world. Consider passages 13 and 17 in the Apocalypse of Abraham, where
Abraham, addressing God, says, "O Thou, who abolishest the confusion, the
mixing up of the universe, the confusion that follows that disintegration of
the world of evil and of righteous alike, thou renewest the world of the
righteous." This approach requires real space.
This idea of space and matter that we have been talking about so far has
not been universally recognized by everybody who studies these things. One
thing some students have recognized is the concern with real space. Actually,
the scriptures are quite taken up with time and space. These ideas weren't
recognized until we read the old books and the scriptures again. Sure enough,
they are there, large as life. "How could we have missed them all these
years?" we ask. We missed them because we have been warped and prejudiced by
the accepted schools of thought that took over in the Fourth Century.
The Bible talks a lot about going and coming. Things must be going to
somewhere and coming from somewhere. A recent work by a Lutheran scholar says
that expressions such as "to visit the earth" and "he went and preached to the
spirits in prison" cannot be taken in any but the most literal sense. Early
church members really thought they had to go somewhere. All don't think so
now. After all, as St. Augustine says, God is everywhere. He can't go
anywhere. He is perfect. He can't do anything. To do is the act of an
unsatisfied being for whom something has to be done that hasn't been done.
Since God has done everything, He can't do anything, can't go anywhere. That's
the way scholars used to think, in terms of absolutes. But that's not
recognized today. A Catholic writer, writing very recently in Verbum Domini,
says, "We are never allowed to forget that heaven is not only a state, but a
place." Aquinas said that heaven is not a place; that's an absurd, crude, old
idea. Heaven is a state, the state of bliss, the beatific vision.
The Pistis Sophia says that it is the nature of every creation to seek a
more roomy space. It's an expanding universe that these people described;
every creation has its tendency to seek a more roomy place. Every kingdom
requires space: `We will go down, for there is space there." (Abraham 3:24.)
By the law of plenitude or perfect economy, no space should be wasted and none
should be crowded: "There is abundant room in thy paradise," says the 11th Ode
of Solomon, "and nothing is useless therein." There is no waste, neither is
there crowding. In the Ginza, a very important and very old work of the
Mandaeans, Jesus is told, "Go down to that place where there are no skenas."
(Skena is a topos, a dwelling place; the same word as the Greek skene, "tent,"
the same as a shekinah, the dwelling of the Holy Spirit of the Jews. In Syriac
it means an occupied place.) The Father says, in effect, "Go down to that
place where there are no skenes and no worlds. Create there for us another
world after the fashion of the sons of salvation." The same writing explains
that when the mass and number of the worlds are filled, a squeeze begins, and
it's time for expansion. "All spaces come forth from the Father," says the
Gospel of Truth, "but at first, they have neither form nor name." He organizes
and supervises and sees that a place is properly and economically used;
everything is controlled. But the idea of pure space, of absolute emptiness,
is abhorrent to these people. There is no point to it. A total void without
even chaotic matter is utterly abhorrent.
The ultimate form of damnation is to be with Satan, and Paul says that
Satan is the prince of the air. Demons have no place for their foot, no sure
footing; they don't have a place, an establishment, no base of operations
anywhere. To be deprived of the ordinances of the gospel, says the Pistis
Sophia, is to be like one suspended in the air. The theme is common in the
"Forty Day Literature." The apostles ask the Lord, during the forty days after
the resurrection, to show them what it is like before the Creation and when
the creation arose. He tells them, "Don't ask for that"; people can't remain
in their right minds after seeing that sort of thing. (Abraham saw the star.
He says you won't like it. It is terrifying.) "My Father worked out his
kingdom in fear and trembling, and I must do the same." When these apostles
asked to see the spaces, in quite a number of these writings the Lord warned,
"No, it's better for you not to, because it is more frightening than anything
else if you don't know what is going on." "Only the Lord," says the Gospel of
Truth, "has penetrated the terrors of empty space."
All spaces are broken and confused, especially during periods of
transition from old worlds to new, for they have no fixity or stability at
that time. In 1 Enoch, the ultimate horror is being in a place without a
firmament, without a foundation beneath, a place kept as a prison for those
who transgress. This is why the idea of the rock, the foundation, or the
cornerstone is so important; before you can begin any structure, before you
can begin any plan, any life, any building, you must have some point on which
you can fix yourself firmly. And what is that? I use the image of the rock to
answer that.
There must be a rock, or whatever supports the rock. This, of course, was
a main problem with the ancient cosmology, beginning with the philosophers of
Melitus. They said the earth is on the back of a tortoise. And what supports
the tortoise? He stands on the back of the great water that surrounds it. And
what supports the water? Now you have to think fast, because something always
supports it. Our texts are very fond of the word topos. A topos is not just a
space; it's a special space marked off and set apart for a particular purpose
or activity. A topos is useful space, just as a chairos is a period of time
set apart for the carrying out of some specific task. Thus we are often told
that the Lord, having accomplished his mission on earth, returned to the topos
from which he came. We find this in the Gospel of John, and also in the Gospel
of Peter, and others.
God started out the Creation by making a topos for his children, that
they might settle there, and there recognize and serve him as their father. In
the Ginza, he tells Adam, "Adam, this is the place in which you are going to
live. Your wife, Eve, will come and join you here [notice the preexistence],
and here your progeny will thrive." Then there is the concept of distance,
which leads naturally to the idea of multiplicity of worlds. (This has been
implicit in all that we have been saying, and on the subject all these
writings have a good deal to say.) After the plan of creation was accepted, it
was communicated to all the other worlds. All the other worlds contributed
something to the making of this one, because they rejoiced in such a project.
For the worlds exist, we are told in the Askew Manuscript, so that intelligent
spirits might come and inhabit them. Not only are the worlds countless,
according to Philip, but they have been going on forever. Adam's holy angels
inhabit many worlds. "Thou light of our worlds, come and be king of our land
and our city," they say as the Lord goes from one to another. "No words could
describe thy power over all thy worlds," says the Ginza. "The Father taught me
about the worlds of the Lord and the glory that abides therein. The atom of
light treads upon the earth's trembling foundation that is laid in the midst
of the worlds." Even Justin Martyr says that the Christian is promised
boundless cosmoses. This is our promise that we shall inherit. Maimonides
said, "This world is but a speck among the worlds and man is as nothing. Man
is nothing in the midst of the worlds." It was the degenerate Minaean Jews who
first taught that ours was the only world, says the Talmud. "To correct this
we say in our prayers today, Mi-'olamim l-olamim, worlds without end, using
the plural." Origen believed, says Jerome, that there are countless worlds. He
did not believe, like the pagan Epicurus, that they existed all at once, but
that they were constantly coming into existence and passing away. This was the
old Christian teaching.
"O Father which art in the heavens", "heavens" is always plural in any
ancient Lord's Prayer you can find anywhere. It is to be understood in the
most literal sense: the heavens are plural, and our Father is in the heavens.
This has been recognized recently. Both a Roman Catholic and a Protestant have
recently written articles on this point. The Protestant says that the idea
that this is the only world is not an early Christian but a heathen Greek
conception taken over by the Church from Aristotle. And the Catholic writer,
in The New Scholastic, wrote recently that "the idea that the earth is the
heavy center of everything and therefore the only world [this the sluggish
earth, the center of everything] is from Aristotle. This is not from the
Bible. It was not held by the early Church." Aristotle's concept was the
science of the time, not the Bible of the time. The early Christians believed
in this multiplicity of worlds. It's only later that the Christian world,
following Aristotle, a good scientist, went the other way. Over against this,
our older Christian sources also remind us that in the great scheme of things,
everything is in the plural: worlds, universes, plans, gods, spaces, saviors,
and so forth. A multiplicity of worlds are organized on a common pattern. For
example, a newly found Apocryphon of James (also the Askew Manuscript, the
Second Coptic work, and the Apocryphon of John) notes that in all the worlds
there is a common pattern, and its base is a monad rule-there is one rule
everywhere; but God always rules through a presidency of three and through a
council of twelve, no matter what the world is. This is a law that exists
throughout all the worlds. A number of these sources talk about that. These
repetitions are infinite in number and scope.
Carl Schmidt believed that the Second Jeu was the most important of all
early Christian writings. It is the best expression of early Christian
teachings. And this tells us that a person who is sent to take charge of a new
world, as Adam was sent to take charge of this world, is called a Jeu, a form
of the word Jehovah. Then he says, "As Jeus become fathers [once you have
become established, you become a father], then you will appoint Jeus for new
worlds, who will in time become fathers, and so on, ad infinitum." So you have
the Jeus promoted to fathers, who then send out other sons as Jeus, and so
forth. Each aeon has created for its own host ten thousand times ten thousand.
They like to talk about these things. In every individual world God made three
hundred and sixty thousand agents, in every dwelling place three hundred and
sixty thousand other dwelling places. The earth and the planets are but atoms
in an infinity of like systems. That's from the Sefer Yetzirah, a very old
Jewish work, widely recognized by the Jews.
Origen repeatedly quoted from writers of the early Church. "This is not
my opinion; this is what the elders used to teach," he would say. "There will
be another world after this one. And in the same way, there were other worlds
before this one. We thus share a common nature with other worlds." Or as
Methodius, the last man to organize this material and bring it together, in
the eighteenth volume of the Patrologiae Graecae wrote, "Christ came down from
his vast rule and kingdoms and other worlds to save one percent of those on
this evil earth, and to enroll the human race in the heavenly register." For
this work goes on in a vast scale, and it involves many other worlds. But what
does this do to the oneness of God, and so forth? It does no harm at all,
because all is going according to the same system, and before anyone can be
entrusted to take charge of a world, he must be trusted.
We are here for the purpose of being saved, and we must also be safe.
Exaltation is something more. All will be saved in the kingdom of God, but who
is safe? Who can be trusted? With reference to man's responsibilities, we are
here to be tested whether we can be trusted to take charge on our own, because
if you can be trusted completely, you'd do the very same thing God would do.
You'd represent him completely. So there is only one God, only one ruling
mind, and only one pattern after all. The oneness of God is never jeopardized
here. The Askew Manuscript says, "There are many mansions, many regions,
degrees, worlds, spaces, and heavens, but all have but one law. If you keep
that law, you, too, can become creators of worlds," an astonishing statement.
The Gospel of Truth says, "It is the perfect Father who produced the all,
in whom the all is, in whom all are in need always." We are never free from
needing him. He is still in charge. Others are put in charge in whom he can
trust, but always it goes back to him. "Out of the one come the countless
multitudes, but yet they remain in the One." "All the other worlds look to the
same God as to a common sun." The crucifixion is effective in worlds other
than this one. Another says, "All the cosmoses follow the pattern of a single
world, which is called the type, the archetype. Ever since the beginning this
has been so, keeping the entire physis in the state of joy and rejoicing."
(Because it has been organized, it's the same.) "The worlds exchange wisdom
with each other because they are equally dependent on the Most High." They
have the same common source. "They are the heralds of His thought," says the
famous 12th Ode of Solomon; "by His word they communicate with each other.
They know Him who made them because they are in concord. They have a common
ruler, a common lord, so they are in concord with each other, and they
communicate with Him and through Him with each other, for the mouth of the
Most High has spoken to them." Another Ode: "The worlds were made by His word
and by the thought of His heart, so they are all as one. There is no rivalry
or competition among them, but they are glorious in their firmaments and agree
among themselves, fitting together like the lashes of an eye. All rejoice in
each other, each being more glorious and bright than the other." There is a
hierarchy of brightness, the range going on forever, each more glorious than
the next.
The Ginza says that when beings from different worlds meet, they exchange
garments and treasures as a sign of mutual esteem and identification. "For the
creation of endless worlds follows the single pattern laid down by the
Creator." The planets then say, "Lord, come, Lord of the Gods, Lord of the
entire cosmos." They rejoice and say, "Come, be our Head. Be our head of the
whole world." This is the parousia, when the Lord visits us for a while, and
we want him to stay with us. "The worlds will come before Him in order and in
shining hosts," says one of the new homilies. "God is the Father of all the
worlds," says 1 Clement, which virtually everybody recognizes as an authentic
writing of the early Church. "He knows them; they keep their courses and
covenants with Him; He calls them by name, and they answer him from eternity
to eternity. As the Father of greatness is in the glorious world, so his Son
rules among those cosmoses as first chief lord of all the powers." Thus, as
one recent study observes, "The multiplicity of successive worlds tends
towards unity." "The cosmos is not simply a oneness of self, of nothing and
nothing else," writes the great fourth century Bishop Synesius, "but rather a
multiplicity comprised in a oneness."
This is the terror of science fiction today: "If you could only escape
from this little confining world of ours and go out into the vastness of
space, wouldn't that be a wonderful adventure?" So you go out there and what
do you find? The same thing you find here. It's like landing in one
airport, it's just like the airport you got on in. And so it becomes rather
depressing, and finally it becomes actually terrifying, always just more of
the same. It's a horrible trap from which you can't escape.
The universe of the Middle Ages was not small, when thought of in terms
of billions of miles, it was tremendous. But it was closed. It makes no
difference how big it is as long as it is closed. You see, you can't escape.
There's just more of the same. You've seen it all. You're not going anywhere.
That is the message of science fiction. That is why writers like Bradbury and
Heinlein are turning away from it. They've rather got soured on it now,
because once they've gone through all the places they can think of, that's it.
This is the nice thing about the teaching we are talking about. You don't
get stuck in that groove. Sir Isaac Newton says, "Only little minds are
impressed by size and numbers." What's the point to endless repetitions of the
same? (I don't want more of the same.) One of the nicest things about early
Christian cosmology is that it is not the repetition of sameness. The types
are there, but they are always expressed in individuals who never express the
type in exactly the same way, just as no two snowflakes are alike, yet they
all have to have six points, no more and no less.
The first thing to get clear, when we start talking about other worlds,
is that we know nothing about them. It comes only by revelation. These things
are not the extent or the projection of our own scientific world or literary
experience, and not the production of our own imagination. Those who have seen
other worlds in vision tell us that we simply cannot imagine what they are
like.
Remember what Paul said after he talked about going to the third heaven:
I can talk about one who was caught up. I've seen those things. And what about
it? "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of
man." Nobody has seen anything like it. Nobody has heard anything like it. You
can't imagine what it is like, it has not "entered into the heart of man." So
you shouldn't try to make yourself a picture of what heaven is like. You'll be
completely wrong. And that's good, because I don't want it to be more of the
same, more of this. It would be an awful bore, wouldn't it?
The Pistis Sophia: "Other worlds cannot possibly be described in terms of
this world. Not only is there less in common between other worlds and this
world, they differ as widely among themselves as any of them does from us."
"In the limited confines of the flesh," the new and valuable writing of James
explains, "which condition all our thinking, we can't possibly grasp the
nature of other existences or even begin to count the number of other worlds."
We are necessarily prone to think in terms of our world. Of course we can't
think in any other terms. We haven't the remotest idea of what it's like. We
use the words we do because we don't have any others. As St. Augustine says,
"This is the wrong picture I have given you, but at least it's a picture."
(Impar imago, sed imago.)
"When we say Light," says the Sophia Christi, "we think of our kind of
light." But that's wrong. When we say marriage, for example, in the other
world, it'll be entirely different from what it is here, though of course we
must designate earthly and heavenly marriage by the same name. Even though
spirits may be eternal and thus equal in age, this writing explains, they
differ in intelligence, in appearance, and in other things. And these
differences are primary, as unbegotten as the spirits themselves. It is not
something that's acquired. We are just different, primary and unbegotten, and
no two alike.
The Lord tells the Apostles in the Epistle of the Apostles, "Where my
Father is, it's entirely different from this world. There you will see lights
that are nobler than your kind of light. In the millions of worlds that God
has made for his son, every world is different from the others and wonderful
in its own radiance." Quoting the Odes of Solomon: "Hence, one of the joys of
existence is that the worlds constantly exchange with each other what they
have, each possessing something different and peculiar to itself. There is
nothing superfluous anywhere, which means that nothing is a mere duplication
of something else."
You may wonder why we are not sharing the fun here on earth. That's
because we have been quarantined. We've been isolated for a special testing
situation. Remember, that's what the Lord told Enoch when he was talking about
the world. He had created "worlds without number," and yet he told Enoch,
"Among all the workmanship of my hands there has not been so great wickedness
as among thy brethren." (Moses 7:36.) So when you are here, you are getting a
real test. They talk a lot about that, this test being so much harder. We may
mention that when we get to Adam.
This is one of the joys of cosmic contemplation. The Berlin Papyrus tells
us how every world breaks up into various types. There are five worlds, five
spirits, five bodies, five tastes-the senses. Although the inhabitants have
the same senses there that we have here, they are not alike. They don't
respond on the same scale. Again, you think of the spectrum-of all the things
we are missing that we might be experiencing. There are all kinds of strange
beasts on other worlds that we can't even imagine. In some worlds reproduction
is carried out differently from here. The Zohar, perhaps the oldest Jewish
writing known, says, "There are all sorts of creatures for all sorts of
environments. Only man is the same everywhere and yet he's the most individual
of all." That's wonderful, isn't it? All these creatures adapt themselves to
different worlds, like the monsters of the past, dinosaurs, the stegosaurus,
and various creatures living in other geologic ages. They had to adapt
themselves, and in other worlds it could be the same thing-the most fantastic
forms of life. Man is the only one that is the same everywhere, because he
adapts himself in a different way. He's the most different of all. For as
Brigham Young used to say, looking out over the Tabernacle, "I don't see two
faces alike here." Isn't it marvelous. No two alike. "Vive la différence!"
"In the Hebrew Universe," writes Pederson, "the world consists of a
number of lives that are intermixed but can never become merged because each
has its special character. Individuals remain forever themselves." Among ten
thousand times ten thousand worlds, says the Ginza, you will find no two
alike. A prayer from the Mandaean Prayer Book reads, "Before this world there
were already a thousand thousand mysteries and a myriad myriad planets, each
with its own mysteries." The multiplicity of worlds, as taught by the Early
Church, formed a perfect unity as do the strings of a lyre. Each plays a
different note; together they make marvelous harmony. If two strings play the
same note, there is not much point to that. There must be a great
orchestration. This is a common idea among the ancients. Plotinus taught that
each star existed for the sake of the whole, to which it contributed its
individuality. Each has its particular part to play; by being uniquely itself
it can make a contribution of maximum value.
There is the great difference, and among the differences there is a
hierarchy. Some are greater than others. That is the concept of the three
degrees of glory. The one thing they all have in common is that there are
three main degrees. "You can visit the orders below you," says the Pistis
Sophia, "but not the level or orders above you." The three degrees are
described in a great number of manuscripts. Ignatius, writing to the
Trallians, says the same thing. Ignatius was the last church father who knew
the mysteries of the church; the Saints have asked him to tell them about some
of these mysteries and the levels of other worlds. And this is what he says in
reply: "I could write to you about the mysteries of the heavens, but I am
afraid to do so. It would do you harm. I am able to understand the orders of
the heavens, the degrees of the angels, the variations among them, and the
differences of dominions, of thrones and powers, and of the elevation of the
Holy Ghost and of the kingdom of the Lord, and the highest of all rules of God
over everything else. There is an infinity of hierarchy in the world." But he
died and took his knowledge with him. "You're not ready for it yet," he said,
"and the Church is not going to have it."
An early hymn says, "Christ rules in second place. His rule exactly
duplicates the Father's but over a more limited number of cosmoses." Methodius
explains this, he being in my opinion the last church father to correlate what
stuff remained of the concept. He says, "If other stars are greater than our
world, then it is necessary that they contain life greater than ours, and
greater peace, and greater justice, and greater virtue than ours." (Remember,
the Lord tells Abraham that as there is one above another, there must be
another higher than they. Then he adds, "I am more intelligent than they all."
This is the principle set forth in the Pearl of Great Price.) "The spirits,"
says the Sophia Christi, a newly found manuscript, "are equal in age but
different in power, intelligence and appearance, and have been so throughout
all time." Origen was greatly intrigued by this diversity, and especially the
inequality among God's creatures. How do you explain that inequality? If it is
arbitrary then God is unjust. So he concludes that the levels on which we find
ourselves in this world must somehow have been merited in a former life. He in
fact goes further than this. In this world we not only have a hierarchy, but
all things are moving forward, not moving backward. It was a dynamic concept
of Origen's in which all things are moving forward: "Until Christ came and
opened the way, it was impossible to go from one taxis, one level, to another.
He is the great opener of the way." The reason we call Christ the Way is that
he opened the way by which we can progress.
Being the Way, the Lord himself also advances. Thus, the Word of the
Father advances in the All, being the fruit of his heart and the expression of
his will. (See the Gospel of Truth.) Through the ordinances, we are told, one
makes progress in knowledge, and these ordinances go on and on. There are
mysteries so much greater than the ordinances of this world that they make
loaves look like a grain of flour, just as the sun looks like a grain of flour
from those distant worlds. When we go to our heavenly homes, some of us will
be in a world quite remote where we could still see the sun, but it would look
so tiny that it would be like a grain of flour. On this earth everyone
descends, as it were, to the dregs and shares the common substance with all
living things. From here we begin to work our way up step by step to a
knowledge of all things, ever seeking for instruction and carrying out the
required ordinances that will lead us to more. Thus we move from truth to
truth, and the further advanced one is, the faster one moves forward. This is
the principle: "To them that have shall be given." With exaltation comes an
increase, an acceleration of exaltation, and the further advanced one is, the
faster one moves forward. So the further you get ahead, the faster you get
ahead. The example is Adam.
Quoting from the Sophia: "Adam, having been established with Christ and
God (the Great Three) next established his son Seth in second order which was
to follow him on up." "He who has fulfilled all the ordinances and done good
works cannot be held back." Another passage says, "We are taught the
principles of salvation so that we cannot be held back in this world." A
Manichaean text: "Those who shut the doors against me will be held back in the
abode of darkness. Those who open the door will advance to the place of
light."
It was the ancient Jewish teaching, according to Professor Goodenough,
that the patriarchs advanced to the spiritual stage where they assumed the
garments of light and became saviors, saviors of their fellows. And R. H.
Charles, commenting on the Book of Enoch, says, "For the righteous Jew,
hereafter, life will be a constant progress from light to light as we become
companions to the hosts of heaven." So the idea of eternal progress is an old
Jewish concept and an early Christian concept, too. "To be true and faithful,"
says the very early Father Papias, "God gave dominion over the arrangement of
the universe to the true and faithful. Their rule and their advancement go on
forever and ever."
"Because of the Plan," says Codex Brucianus 96, "we are always to look
upward"; from time to time there is a great coronation day, a cosmic
commencement day in which all who are worthy take over their new position and
receive the spaces assigned them with their crowns of advancement. Clement of
Alexandria and Origen, those two earliest fathers, each having one foot in the
old church and one in the new, characteristically accepted the doctrine of
eternal progression at first, then rejected it when the schoolmen finally
talked them out of it. In Origen's universe there are more exalted beings who
leave the less exalted beings further and further behind. He compares their
advancements to a series of examinations and makes much of the three degrees
of glory, "three celestial levels, like the sun, the moon, and the stars."
According to him, the visible world is only a small fraction of the invisible
world, which in turn is only a small fraction of the potential world that is
to become reality in the aeons ahead. All this from Origen, the greatest of
Christian theologians before he joined the doctors, when he still spoke as an
early Christian. "After death," he says, "I think the saints go to Paradise, a
place of teaching, a school of the spirits in which everything they saw on
earth will be made clear to them. Those who were pure in heart will progress
more rapidly, reaching the kingdom of heaven by definite steps or degrees."
For Origen, according to Father Danielou, evil is nothing else than refusal to
accept progress. This recalls a statement from the Pistis Sophia that hell is
what lies in the opposite direction from that of progress, a state of inert
and helpless being. Hell is not lively; it is the opposite of action, energy,
purpose, and motion. The devil has no real purpose; all he is trying to do is
thwart someone else's purpose. He has no principle of action within himself.
He is apolyon, the destroyer; satan or diabolos, the accuser.
It is undeniable that this doctrine of eternal progression points
inescapably in the direction of becoming like God. There are many mansions,
regions, degrees, worlds, spaces, and heavens, but all have but one law. If
you keep this law, you will become creators of worlds. The worlds are so that
intelligent spirits might come and inhabit them and in the process and in due
time become gods, since they are literally the children of God. "The sign of
Divinity," says the Ginza, "is that one's glory expands." It is always
increasing. It's an expanding universe, isn't it? This reminds me of a
statement in the Gospel of Philip: "A dog begets a dog, a horse begets a
horse." And you call yourselves the children of God? What does that mean? How
can you avoid the conclusion in that case? What does a god beget? What does a
god beget? Like begets like. You call yourselves the children of God. These
people liked to call themselves that, the Children of Light and the Children
of God.
Conspicuously lacking in the divine hierarchy is any sense of rank or
class. Obedience and subordination in nowise jeopardize individual freedom and
leadership and command, and in no way impose dictatorship as long as the whole
concern of those above is to reach down in love to those below, and those
below strive to rise in love to those above. (Moses 1:38-39.) This sense of
equality pervades everything here. Every spirit, says the Apocryphon of John,
is a "monarchia," a rule unto itself, and subject to no one, having been in
the very beginning with God. There is thus that about it that can never be
forced. (One of President Heber J. Grant's favorite expressions was "Never
force the human mind.") Some people consider the Apocryphon of John one of the
most important discoveries in the last ten years.
"In this world all creatures are of the same material," says the Pistis
Sophia, and we should never forget it. God is testing us here to see if we can
be trusted to rule over other creatures in love and not in arrogance. If we
destroy the things placed under our dominion, just because we have power to
destroy, we will never be trusted with real dominion, worlds without end.
Now to examples of the ordinances these writings talk about. God operates
through agents. He sends people. They are the "sent ones." In fact, a Swede by
the name of Widengren has recently written a book about the "Sent One."
Instead of coming personally and giving his messages, God gives others a
chance to share in his activities by sending them as messengers with various
duties. That is the thing that always stops the Muslims. They think that our
plan of salvation is much too complicated. "Why make it so complicated?" They
ask, "Why can't you say that God does it, and that is that? He does
everything. He'll forgive us in the end, and everything will be all right. We
don't need anything but God. And you bring a son in, the Holy Ghost, and all
this sort of thing." And you say to the Muslim, "What's the Creed? What's your
shahadah?" "Well, I testify that I believe in God, in his angels, in his
prophets, in his apostles, and in his books." "Hey wait a minute. What are all
these angels doing? I thought you believed in a just God. Isn't that enough?
What does he need angels for? Why can't he deliver his message directly? Why
does he need prophets to come down and speak for him? Why does he need books
for you to consult?" God uses agents; he uses agents; he uses "sent ones" all
the way through. Don't complain to us about complications!
God sends his agents to other worlds to engage in this operation. We all
have a share in this sort of thing. We meet with the "sent one" most
frequently and most dramatically in the story of Adam. "After the physical
Adam was created, a messenger was sent to the head of all generations (that
is, Adam), and at his call, Adam awoke and said, `How the precious, beautiful
life has been planted in this place. But it's hard for me to be down here.'"
The "sent one" then reminded Adam, "But your beautiful throne still awaits
you, Adam. Why then do you, the image of God, sit here complaining? All of
this is being done for your good. I have been sent down to teach you, Adam,
and to free you from this world. Listen and return to the light."
The Ginza (488) tells how when Adam stood praying for light and
knowledge, a helper came to him and gave him a garment and said to him, "Those
men who gave you the garment will assist you throughout your life until you
are ready to leave the earth." The commonest account of these visitors, also
found in the Ginza, is that when Adam was created he was found in a deep sleep
from which he was awakened by the helper who forthwith began to instruct him.
And at his death also the "sent one" came to take Adam back to the great,
first parental house and to the places in which he formerly dwelt.
First he was taken to a place of detention, the shomai, the place in
which to be instructed. Here he learns the signs of the nail of glory and the
keys of the Kushta on both arms. The Kushta is a hand grip of some type. A
messenger from the House of Light was sent to fetch Adam farther when he was
ready. The reason that so often the Adam of light comes down (the preexistent
Adam, that is, the Adam of Light that comes down to help us) is that he was
the first one who needed help; he as our Father sympathizes with us, and he
wants to see that we get through. So he is our great helper. He is the sent
one. Of course Jesus Christ is the Sent One of all. When Adam faced the Light
and called for help, the Lord himself approached him in glory and took him by
the palm of the right hand and calmed him and instructed him. Then he
comforted Eve, and in this way he brought joy and aid to his descendants. The
Lord came to bring hope to Adam, who was in the image of God. This is repeated
also in the case of Abraham. In the vast majority of accounts, it's the three
sent ones who instruct Adam. There is no conflict. There are simply two great
teams of three. There is the Creation team: Adam and Jesus and the Father; and
there are the three that instruct Adam, who are later of the twelve, the three
pillars of the Church, Peter, James, and John. We have references to them in
some of the writings, and the passages are rather interesting.
In the Berlin Papyrus, "The first man, Adam, was really the third sent
one at the Creation." (There were three sent ones, and he was the third one.)
According to the Apocryphon of Adam, Adam was awakened from his deep sleep by
three men from on high, who said to him, "Adam awake, arise and hear the
teachings of the Savior." It was through a team of three, according to the
Sophia Christi, that God created everything, employing them as his agents. As
the Abbaton puts it, "The Father instructed the Son, who in turn instructed
the great angel to go down and form a new world." But they didn't merely
delegate the work, they worked together. "The three," says our source,
"stretched forth their hands, took clay and made man." And many expeditions
were sent to the earth before things were ready to receive him. Codex
Brucianus 96 says, "Whenever that life-giving spark is sent, it is always
followed up by three Sent Ones to give instruction." So in any world, those
who receive the spark will also find three helpers ready to instruct them. The
three are always there to supervise, and the evil spirits resent it. Here is a
very interesting passage from the Ginza where the evil spirits say, "They
claim this world for their own." They have been cast down here, this is
theirs, and they don't like people intruding. "These three men," they say,
"are in the world. They are not really men. They are light and glory, and they
have come down to this little enush [Adam-he's little enush now because he has
taken on flesh, and he's very susceptible to ills of the world], who is
helpless and alone in the world. They are intruding in our world. The children
of men have taken over the earth. They are really strangers who speak the
language of the three men, and they have accepted the teachings of the three
men and rejected us in our own world and refused to acknowledge our kingdom
and our glory." And thus the evil ones plotted to overthrow Adam, who was
hoping for the Savior, the Teacher of Life, to come down later and teach
him, give him aid and support.
"At the creation," says the Ginza, "God gave an order that the angel
should come and keep Adam company." And at the beginning, it was the Lord
himself and two companions who instructed Adam and Eve in everything. "When
Adam was placed on the earth, three Uthras were sent to oversee him, with
myself at their head. I taught Adam and Eve the hymns and the order of prayer
and the Masagases (that is, the Mounting Up or Returning to Heaven) and the
pattern of the universe." "In sending three," God said to the Pure Sent One,
"go call Adam and Eve and all of their descendants and teach them concerning
everything, about the kingdom of Light and the worlds of Light. Be friendly
with Adam and keep him company, you and the two angels that will be with you,
and warn them against Satan." That's the Berlin Papyrus. Another one says,
"Also teach them chastity."
We read of another team of three when Adam called upon God; the Great
Spirit sent to him from the land of greatness the three who belonged to the
twelve who were hidden in the veil of light (and those were later Peter,
James, and John). Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael and all the angels come down.
"I will come, and my Father and Michael," Jehovah says; "we are the great
three who have visited the earth." They are also matched by the three violent
ones and the Watchers.
All this implies, of course, preexistence. Adam coming down to earth is a
theme you find frequently now. Throughout early Christian literature, in fact,
going to heaven is constantly being described as a return to an old home, and
that's the way the present Pope describes it: man is an outcast in this world,
yearning for his home. If he was created here, and this was the only world he
ever knew, that wouldn't be his position at all. He would not be an outcast or
a stranger. He'd be in his own world. The implication of preexistence is very
strong; these writings talk about it frequently. In the Apocryphon of James,
for example, the Lord tells the apostles, "They will ask you where are you
going." The answer, "To the place from which I came. I return to that place."
And the elect are those individuals, according to the Gospel of Thomas, who
shall find the kingdom because they came from it in the first place. The
Gospel of Truth dwells at length on the theme of the return: "Whoever has this
knowledge is a being from on high. When he is called, he hears and answers and
turns toward him who calls him and re-ascends to him. He knows what he is
called; he knows whence he has come and where he is going. He has turned many
from error and preceded them to the places which belong to them but from which
they have strayed. Joy to the man who has rediscovered himself and has
awakened and helped others to wake up."
Just so, in the great old Manichaean Song Book, Adam is received by a
happy family on his return. On the other side, they have awaited him in high
expectation, or the return of the first man with news from him. They have
eagerly awaited news of Adam's victory, of the success of his mission; and
they want to hear it from his own lips when he returns. On his part, Adam,
being away from home, asks a Newsbearer of the Skies, as he is called, "How is
my Father, the Father of Light? How is my Mother, the mother of the living
whom I left, and her brethren also? Rejoice with me, ye holy ones, for I have
returned to my original glory again." And again, in leaving the earth, he
says, "My hour has come. They summon me. I will go from your midst and return
to my true home." Accordingly, "The Sent One comes to take the soul of Adam
back to the great first house of his Father to the place where he formerly
lived." And so his children were admonished, "Arise, old soul, return to your
original home, to the place from which you were planted. Put on your garment
of glory. Sit down upon your throne. Dwell in the dwellings among the inthras,
thy brethren." And again, "Now arise and return to the place of thy true
family." "I came from the house of my Father," says the Psalm of Thomas, "in a
far land, and I shall mount up until I return to that land of the pure." There
is a moving scene at the end of the Pearl, the most moving of all the early
Christian Syriac writings, where the hero finally returns to his home, his
mission accomplished. He's met at the gate of greeting and honor by his entire
family. He bows and worships his father and the Christ of the Father "who has
sent me the garments and given me the orders while I was on the earth." All
the princes of the house were gathered at the gate. They embraced him with
tears of joy as the organ plays and they all walk back to the house together.
And Gregor of Nyssa, one of the three great Cappadocians, writing about
this, says that in his time, the Fourth Century, the church was very confused
about these teachings. They were being rapidly lost. He says, "Christians are
all confused about the preexistence. Some say we lived in families there, and
in tribes just as we do here, and that we lost our wings when we came down
here and will get them back again upon earth." So they mix up tenable and
untenable things; all sorts of strange ideas get in the picture. Regardless of
what the true picture is, we know that the early Christians did believe very
strongly in the preexistence. The mysterious word propators, which they used a
lot, is now recognized as not meaning the Father who was before our Heavenly
Father but our Heavenly Father as our forefather, our propator, "the father of
our preexistent spirit," says a quotation from a newly found work. "When they
ask you who you are," says the Apocryphon of James, "say `I am a son and I
come from the Father.' And when they ask you what sort of son and from what
father, answer, `From the preexistent Father and I am a son of the
Preexistence.'" The spirit existed before the flesh," says a psalm. Commenting
on the teaching of this doctrine, the Clementine Recognitions, the editors of
the Patrologiae Graecae note that various fathers of the church represented
every interpretation of the doctrine, from absolute acceptance to absolute
denial. Most of the fathers temporized somewhere in between. Again, this is a
good indication that we are dealing with an authentic teaching of the early
church, since the early fathers are all for it. The later ones don't know;
they are not so sure.
"The earth had already passed away," says one of these new writings, "and
the Son had already had glory before this earth was ever created," reminding
us that the fact that we do not know them does not mean that other times and
worlds have not existed and do not now exist. From the Apocalypse of Abraham:
"Before the worlds were I was a strong god who once created the light of the
world." And he tells Abraham how "I explained my will to those who stood
before me in this form that I am showing you in the spirit world before they
came into existence." Abraham is shown the council of heaven in the spirit
world in the preexistence. It is plain enough what is meant by "coming into
existence."
Man's premortal existence was an illustrious one. There are descriptions
of the glory we enjoyed before we came here. In these writings there is also a
good deal about ordinances. We can't talk too much about them, or be too
specific about them. These ordinances are vital. They are not mere forms or
symbols, we are told. They are analogues.
Of extreme importance is Adam as Michael. And Adam is aroused by the
three sent ones. Standing with the apostles in the prayer circle, the Lord
tells them, "I will teach you all the ordinances necessary that you may be
purged by degrees and progress in the next life. These things make it possible
for you to achieve other exaltation, but they must be performed in this life.
Unless one performs them here, one cannot become a Son of Light," since the
Sons of Light are by very definition those who are perfect in the ordinances.
Throughout these writings, no matter where they come from, whatever part of
the Old World they come from, the code word is "Sons of Light." Nobody knew
what it meant until now. It means "those who have received all the
ordinances." Temple ordinances are what they are. And this is the way it is
explained in Second Jeu also: The sons of light are by very definition those
who are perfect in the ordinances. It is interesting that this same definition
applies to the once mysterious title of Nazoraean, which means the same thing.
"Until Christ came," says the Pistis Sophia, "no soul had gone through
the ordinances in their completeness. It was He who opened the gate and the
way of life. Those who receive these ordinances are the dispensations of the
Sons of Light. And they receive whatever they desire. They are those who are
upon the right hand, for it is by their faithfulness in these very things that
they show that they are worthy to return and inherit the kingdom. Without the
ordinances, therefore, there is no foothold or foundation or anything in this
life." In First Jeu 86: "If you want to go to the Father, you must pass
through the Veil."
Recently I collected all the references I could find, I have twice as
many now, of the forty-day mission of Christ. Whenever you find a very early
Christian text, it almost always has a title referring to "the secret
teachings of the Lord to the Apostles during the forty days." The fifty texts
available to me then had four things in common.
The first was secrets, what the Lord taught the apostles after the forty
days. When he came after the resurrection, he visited them and taught them.
This was the really important thing, we're told. They didn't understand
anything until then, yet in the Bible we are told hardly a word of what he
taught them. Why not? It was secret.
The second point is that they all asked the Lord, "What's going to happen
to us? What's going to happen to the Church?" And he tells them that it is
going to be on earth for two generations; these things are not going to be
handed down; they are to be buried; they are to be kept secret. They are not
to be passed on to the world. That's why we didn't get them. We are just
finding them now.
Third, he taught the strange doctrines the Christian world did not like
at all, the things we have been talking about: other worlds, things like that.
That was out of bounds to the Christian doctors, because it wasn't Aristotle.
The fourth was the main thing he came to do. He took them through the
temple, he taught them temple ordinances. Only the apostles and the general
authorities, the seventies, were instructed in these, things to be handed
down, not divulged to the public. Though they were very carefully kept from
the public, we have these ordinances now as they are described here, and this
I have talked about in the temple on occasion. I just mention here these
generalities, the importance of these documents, what they meant to those
people. The person who receives these becomes a son. He both gives and
receives (that is what a son does, becomes a father) the signs and the tokens
of the God of Truth while demonstrating the same to the Church, all in the
hopes that these ordinances may some day become realities.
Remember, they are only forms, only types, yet they must be performed
here. It is the same as going to school. If you take a good course in math,
you say you are just working with symbols, dealing with things in the calculus
that are very abstract, or you are dealing with unreal or irrational numbers
and things like that, even though they aren't the real thing. Some day you
will know what's behind it all, in the hope that these things may some day
become reality.
"They may be mere symbols," says the Pistis Sophia, "but they are an
indispensable step to the attainment of real power. Without the mysteries, one
loses one's power." Without the ordinances, one has no way of controlling
matter. For such control begins with control of oneself. The ordinances
provide the means and the discipline by which light operates on material
things. They are meant for instruction, they are meant for practice, and they
are meant as a test of obedience. Your level in the next world will depend on
the ordinances you have received in this world, and whoever receives the
highest ordinances here will understand the whys and wherefores of the great
plan. You cannot hope to understand it all here. It is through the ordinances
that one makes progress in knowledge. For those who receive all the available
ordinances and teachings here shall pass by all intermediate places and not
have to give answers, signs, and stand certain tests hereafter. "John the
Baptist," another writing says, "who performed the ordinances with which he
was entrusted, foretold in a special language that Christ would bring the
ordinances of a higher priesthood as he had brought the ordinances of the
lower." And indeed it was the Lord who, during the forty days, revealed these
ordinances to the apostles.
There is much more to that effect. In most of our sources, after
explaining them to the apostles, the Lord gives a complete summary of all the
rites and their meanings as they stand in the prayer circle. (For a full
discussion of this material, see "The Early Christian Prayer Circle," BYU
Studies 19 (Fall 1978): 41-78.) This is mentioned in many writings, and it
much perplexed the early fathers of the church. The topic finally was brought
up in the Council of Ephesus, at the Second Council of Nicea, which finally
got rid of it, because the fathers couldn't understand what it was all about.
But the Syriac Church kept the rite down until the Seventh Century. We have
one writing, a very valuable one, edited by Rahmani some years ago, long
considered the most valuable of all writings from the early Syriac Church,
called the Testament of Jesus Christ. We mention it here because the author
talks about the prayer circle and how the saints in the Syriac Church used to
perform it. In the Pistis Sophia, at the end of the teachings and performing
of the ordinances, the Lord orders the apostles and their wives to form a
circle (which is one of the reasons these texts were rejected with horror
because they specifically mention their wives being present, and they had to
be in this particular circle). He stands at an altar on one side, while they
recapitulate all the ordinances. The Savior opens with a prayer, which is
given in code. The words in this code aren't always the same. In this one he
says, "I ai oh ah oh i oh i ah", a special code in Coptic. There are lots of
codes in Coptic, and they are not as confusing as you might think. They are to
make sure that all is kept secret from the world. This particular code is
explained as meaning, "Hear me, Father." In First Jeu, the Lord calls on the
Father with different words, also cryptic: "Ie, ie, ie." We are told that in
every world, in every level (every taxis), there are twelve who officiate
under the direction of three, and they always form a circle, without a lower
and a higher, because there is no head of the table in a circle. There is no
sense of rank whatever. They are instructed in all things.
It was to such a circle, First Jeu tells us, that God said in the
beginning, "These I will make my rulers," at the creation of the world.
Abraham was standing in that circle: "These I will make my rulers. Abraham,
thou art one of them." (Abraham 2:23.) But it says specifically here they were
standing in a circle of twelve, and the Lord addressed them that way, saying
they were the ones who would be his rulers on earth. The apostles, in other
words, were appointed in the preexistence.
Before forming the circle, the twelve sing a hymn. When the circle is
formed, the ordinances are pronounced, the Lord recites, and then they recite
after him. In most of the cases they say "amen" after every sentence; in some
they simply repeat his words. In Second Jeu, the apostles and their wives all
form a circle standing around the Lord, who says that he will lead them
through all the ordinances of eternal progression. Clothed in their holy
garments they form a circle, foot to foot, arm resting on arm. Jesus, as Adam,
takes the lead, and all the others say "amen" to each phrase of the prayer. In
the recently found Kasr al-Wizz Manuscript (this one interests me
particularly, because I got the first photographs of it): "`And you shall
recite after me,' and so we made a circle and surrounded Him and he said, `I
am in your midst in the manner of a little child,' and then He says, `After
everything I say you shall say Amen after me.' Gather to me, O Holy members of
my body, when I recite the hymn do ye say `Amen'?" There it breaks off,
unfortunately.
This tradition is recalled a number of times in the earliest Christian
literature. The Acts of John says, "Now, before he was taken by the lawless
Jews [and at the same time he gave them the sacrament in the upper chambers he
had them do this], He gathered us all together and said, `Before I am
delivered up to them, let us sing a hymn unto the Father,' so He commanded us
to make as it were a ring, holding each others' hands, himself standing in the
middle. And He said, `Respond Amen to me,' and then He began to sing a hymn,
`Glory to Thee, Father,' and we, standing about in a ring said `Amen.' " The
phrases to which the apostles then pronounced "Amen" were: "We praise Thee, O
Father." "We give thanks to Thee." "I would be saved and I would save." Then,
"Amen." "I would be loosed and I would loose." "Amen." "I would be a Savior."
"I would be pierced and I would pierce." Then he gave them the sign. "I would
be born and I would bear," and so forth.
One is reminded of a statement in the Gospel of Philip: "Before one can
give, one must receive." Another text adds, "I would wash myself and I would
wash others." "I have no temple, and I have temples." Then the Lord commands,
"Now see thyself in me who speaks, and when thou hast seen what I do, keep
silence about my mysteries. You must see me as I suffer and what I suffer. Who
am I? Thou shalt know when I go away." "Know thou suffering, and thou shalt
have no power to suffer," He tells them. "That which thou knowest, I myself
will teach thee." The prayer ring is mentioned not only in the Acts of Peter,
but also in Irenaeus, in St. Augustine, in Photius, in First and Second Jeu,
in the Testament of our Lord and Savior, in the Second Coptic Gnostic work, in
the Pistis Sophia, and at various councils of the church.
St. Augustine, in reporting the episode of the prayer circle, says the
whole thing was always kept most secret by the early Christians. Epiphanius
says the Second Council of Nicea reported on it and included it among the
lists of blessings handed down in the early Church. But they finally gave it
up in the Eighth Century because they couldn't understand what it was all
about, and it was never used again.
Following this pattern, in the early Syriac Church, the bishop takes his
place at the altar. He first addresses the people in the circle and says, "If
anyone has any ill feelings against his neighbor, let him be reconciled. If
any feels himself unworthy, let him withdraw, for God is witness of these
ordinances, and the Son, and the Angels." God, and the visiting or witnessing
angels, are witnessing these things, so withdraw.
In the Bartholomew, there is some very interesting and personal stuff,
some having to do with Mary. It is not the miraculous Mary literature in which
the chariots of fire and that sort of thing happen. This is very homey, very
natural. The apostles are having a prayer circle one day, and Mary asks if she
might speak a few words. When she goes over to the altar, some of the apostles
don't like it. They say she doesn't have authority, because she's a woman.
Should they allow her to speak? But she says, "I have something I want to tell
you, something that happened in the temple, because this is the proper
occasion for it." Having finished the prayer, Bartholomew says, "She began by
calling upon God with upraised hands, speaking three times in an unknown
language" (the usual code introducing the prayer). Then, "having finished the
prayer, she asked them all to sit on the ground." She asks Peter to support on
her right hand and Andrew to support on her left hand. Then she tells that
just before the birth of Christ, the veil was rent in the temple. On that
occasion she saw an angel in the temple at the veil. He took her by the right
hand, after she had been washed and anointed, wiped off, and clothed with the
garment. She was hailed by him as a blessed vessel. "And he took me by the
right hand and there was bread on the altar in the Temple and he took some and
ate it and gave some to me. And we drank wine together. And I saw that the
bread and wine had not diminished." (The same thing happened in 3 Nephi 20 at
the administering of the sacrament.) All this happened in the temple. At this
point, the Lord himself appeared and forbade Mary to tell any more, since all
the creation, he said, had been completed that day.
The Apocalypse of Abraham says the same thing. "Abraham went with the
Lord and fasted for forty days and God took him to Mt. Horeb and there was an
altar but no offering." But God provided it miraculously, as he does
elsewhere. He had a sacramental meal with his followers, and then the
followers were ordered to stand in a ring and be instructed by Abraham in the
proper manner of sacrifice under the old covenant. So under very much the same
circumstances, he has them stand in a ring, and he instructs them.
A much vaster thing than we had ever imagined before is the doctrine of
identity. This is the most interesting thing, the whole subject of identity.
The expression occurs a great deal. You comprehend what you are like, don't
you? In other words, you identify. We are told time and again that when Jesus
came down to earth he took flesh so that we could comprehend him. He became
like us. "Among the angels he was an angel. Among men he was a man." He
descends to the level of the people whom he must teach, because he must do it
in order to teach them. Because of this principle you comprehend what you are
like, and comprehension means a lot. You comprehend others only to the degree
that you are like them. One way to put it is, "Here, while we are on this
earth, we are in ourselves and the world lies around us outside." We don't
understand it all; it's a great mystery, not only psychologically, but
scientifically and in every other way. We don't know how it is that we
comprehend what's outside, how it's brought to us, how it's transmitted, or
how it gets inside our heads. It's in there, you see. Whatever it is, we are
comprehending because we are seeing both what is in here and out there. By
comprehending something, you embrace it, literally; it is part of you; you
identify with it completely. This means that life will look very different
hereafter, when we can identify with, for example, animals. It wouldn't be
unfair to lower creatures to compare them with ourselves, they would lose
nothing by it. Can they not have joy in the sphere in which they were created
without having our particular type of glory? They aren't missing anything at
all, because we're sharing a common existence. The man comprehends a great
deal more in the love of his dog, and the other way around. If there is a good
feeling between the man and his dog, neither feels cheated; neither feels that
he is being left out of anything, because they are actually sharing in each
other's worlds. You can say that a man has a very intelligent dog of which he
is very fond and that the dog is very fond of the man. They actually share a
very real experience, so that neither has to envy the other at all.
You can heighten this greatly with our Heavenly Father and ourselves. We
are not missing anything. We don't feel cheated by being so far below Him. We
haven't missed a thing. It's just lovely to be near him, because he's trying
to pull us up to him. He wants us to be like Him, to identify with him. We
can't desire anything greater than that, so there is none of this dominance or
submission business. God is not putting himself in charge. We are drawn toward
him, and he wants us to be drawn.
Modern Thinkers (including representative works)
H. A. Brongers
Bibliotheca Orientalis 1948:38
De Scheppingstradities bij de Profeten (Amsterdam: H.J. Paris, 1945)
R. H. Charles
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford: 1913)
The Book of Enoch (Oxford: 1912)
Jean Danielou
Biblica 28(1947)
Origen (N.Y.: Sheed and Ward, 1955)
The Dead Sea Scrolls and Primitive Christianity (Baltimore: Helicon
Press, 1958)
E. S. Drower
The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans (Leiden: Brill, 1959)
The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran (Oxford: 1937)
A Pair of Nasoraean Commentaries (Leiden: Brill, 1963)
Erwin Goodenough
Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, 13 vols. (N.Y.: Pantheon Books,
1953)
Fred Hoyle
"The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Engineering and Science
(November 1981)
Isaac Newton
The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, translated by Andrew
Motte, 2 vols. (London: Dawson, 1968)
Johannes Pederson
Israel: Its Life and Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1947)
Karl Popper
"Science: Problems, Aims, Responsibilities," Federation of American
Societies for Experimental Biology 22(1963)
G. Santillana
Hamlet's Mill (Boston: Gambit, 1969)
Carl Schmidt
Epistola Apostolorum (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1919)
Gesprâche Jesu mit seinen Jungern nach der Aujerstehung (Leipzig:
Hinrichs, 1919)
"Gnostische Schriften in Koptischer Sprache aus dem Codex Brucianus,"
Texte und llntersuchungen 8(1892)
Koptisch-Gnostische Schriften (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1954)
Manichâische Handschriften der Staatlichen Museen Berlin (Stuttgart: W.
Kohlhammer, 1940)
Pistis Sophia (Leiden: Brill, 1978)
Levi Strauss
La Pensee Sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962)
W. Richter
"Urgeschichte und Hoftheologie," Biblische Zeitschrift NF 10 (1966)
W. C. Van Unnik
Evangelien aus dem Nilsand (Frankfurt am Main: H. Sheffler, 1960)
"Newly Discovered Gnostic Writings; a Preliminary Survey of the Nag
Hammadi Find," Studies in Biblical Theology 30(1960)
George Widengren
The Ascension of the Apostle and The Heavenly Book (Uppsala:
Lundequistska Bokhandeln, 1950)
The Gnostic Attitude (Santa Barbara: Inst. of Religious Studies, U. of
Cal., 1973)
"Der Iranische Hintergrund der Gnosis," Zeitschrift fur Religion und
Geistesgeschichte 4(1952)
Journal of Semitic Studies 2(1957)
Ancient and Classical Texts
1 Enoch
1 Jeu
2 Jeu
Acts of John
Acts of Petrian Simon
Apocalypse of Adam
Apocalypse of Abraham
Apocryphon of James
Apocryphon of John
Askew Manuscripts
Berlin Manichaean Coptic Manuscript
Bodmer Papyri
Cathara Wiss Manuscript
Chester Beatty Papyri
Codex Brucianus
Epistle of the Apostles
Ginza
Gospel of Bartholomew
Gospel of Peter
Gospel of Philip
Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Truth
Mandaean Prayerbook
Manichaean Psalm-Book
Odes of Pindar
Odes of Solomon
Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The Pearl
Pistis Sophia
Psalms of Thomas
The Second Coptic Gnostic Work
Sefer Yetzirah
Serekh Scroll
Sophia Christi
Testament of Jesu Christi
Testament of Our Lord and Savior
Zohar
Church Fathers
See generally The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, 23 vols., A. Robertson and J.
Donaldson, eds. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman's, 1951).
Aristides, Aelius
Aquinas, Thomas
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo
Clement, of Rome, Clementine Recognitions, 7 Clement
Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis
Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Caesarea
Gregor, of Nyssa
Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
Irenaeus
Jerome
Justin Martyr
Melito, Bishop of Sardis
Methodius
Origen
Papias, Bishop of Hieropolis
Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople
Synesius Sardicus
Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria
This is a transcript of a talk given in 1967 in Glendale, California, where
Hugh Nibley lived during his teenage years. The informal style typical of his
talks has been preserved. Nibley himself says he speaks much too fast, and the
frequent repetitions are to make sure he is understood. The reader who seeks
documentation for statements made in this talk is referred to "Treasures in
the Heavens," of which this is a more popular and Church-related presentation.
As Christianity has been deeschatologized and demythologized in our own
day, so in the Fourth Century it was thoroughly dematerialized, and ever since
then anything smacking of "cosmism," that is, tending to associate religion
with the physical universe in any way, has been instantly condemned by
Christian and Jewish clergy alike as paganism and blasphemy. Joseph Smith was
taken to task for the crude literalism of his religion, not only talking with
angels like regular people, but giving God the aspect attributed to him by the
primitive prophets of Israel, and, strangest of all, unhesitatingly bringing
other worlds and universes into the picture. Well, some of the early Christian
and Jewish writers did the same thing; this weakness in them has been
explained away as a Gnostic aberration, and yet today there is a marked
tendency in all the churches to support the usual bloodless abstractions and
stereotyped moral sermons with a touch of apocalyptic realism, which indeed
now supplies the main appeal of some of the most sensationally successful
evangelists.
Over a century ago, J. P. Migne argued that the medieval legends of the
Saints were far less prone to mislead the faithful than those scientifically
oriented apocrypha of the Early Church, since the former were the transparent
inventions of popular fantasy that could never lead thinking people astray,
while the latter by their `air of factual reporting and claims to scientific
plausibility led the early Christians into all manner of extravagant
speculation, drawing the faithful astray in many directions. To appreciate the
strength of their own position, Latter-day Saints should not be without some
knowledge of both these traditions. Since the "cosmist" doctrines have been
almost completely neglected, here we offer a look at some of them.
The canonical writings and the Apocrypha have a good deal to say about
"treasures in the heavens." If we compare the "treasures" passages in a wide
sampling of these writings, including those of Qumran, Nag Hammadi and the
Mandaeans, it becomes apparent that "treasures in the heavens" is a part of a
much larger picture, a "cosmist" view of the plan of salvation that was
rejected by the official Christianity and Judaism that emerged triumphant in
the Fourth Century but seems to have been prevalent throughout the Near East
in an earlier period. There is no better approach to the study of this strange
and intriguing doctrine than an examination of the Treasures in Heaven. We
begin with the surprising fact that the Treasures in the Heavens were not
allegorical but real.
That the life-giving treasures of the earth, particularly the golden
grain that was anciently kept in a sacred bin, really comes from the sky is
apparent to everyone. The miracle of the bounties of heaven literally pouring
from "the treasure-houses of the snow, . . . the terrible storehouses" is an
awesome sight and a joyous one. But without a benign intelligence to
administer them, the same elements that bestow life on man can wreak frightful
destruction; hence it is plain that a measure of knowledge, skill, and
benevolence is necessary to convert the raw elements into useful gifts. Thus
when one speaks of treasures in the heavens, one means not only the vast
secret chambers of the rain, snow, and hail, but also the deep hidden wisdom
and the power necessary to control them; God's treasury is a source not only
of the elements that sustain life but also of the light and knowledge that
endow them with that power.
The life-giving fusion of divine wisdom with primal element is often
described in religious texts as a fountain, as "the overflowing waters which
shine" coming from the "treasure-chest of radiance" along with all the other
shining treasures. "Thou hast established every fountain of light beside
Thee," says Baruch, "and the treasures of wisdom beneath Thy throne hast Thou
prepared." The concept is more than a figure of speech; "the heavenly waters.
. . important for life on earth," to be effectively used, must be "gathered in
and assigned . . . to particular treasurehouses ." We are introduced to that
physical part of the heavenly treasure in a grandiose scene in which we behold
a great council in heaven being held at the creation of the world; there God,
enthroned in the midst of his heavenly hosts, explains the plan of creation to
them and then opens his treasure chest before them to show them the wondrous
store of stuff that is to be used in making a world; but the new world is
still in a preliminary state, "like unripe fruit that does not know what it is
to become." It is not until we get to the doctors of the Church, wholly
committed to the prevailing teachings of the schools, that we hear of creation
ex nihilo. Before then, creation is depicted as a process of imposing form
and order on chaotic matter: the world is created for the specific purpose of
carrying out a specific plan, and the plan, like the creation itself, requires
strict organization-all creatures have their work assigned them in the coming
world, to be carried out at predetermined times and places. When the plan was
announced to the assembled hosts, and the full scope and magnanimity of it
dawned upon them, they burst into spontaneous shouts of joy and joined in a
hymn of praise and thanksgiving, the Morning-song of Creation, which remains
to this day the archetype of hymns, the great acclamatio, the primordial
nucleus of all liturgy.
The Creation drama, which is reflected in the great year-rites all over
the ancient world, does not take place in a vacuum but "in the presence of
God," seated in the midst of "His holy ones" with whom he takes counsel, they
being his mind and mouth on the occasion as he is theirs. Though the plan
from first to last is entirely God's own, he discusses it with others,
"consulting the souls of the righteous before deciding to create the world,"
not because he needs their advice, but because the plan concerns them and
requires their maximum participation in it. The discussion was a lively
one-apart from those rebellious angels who rejected it entirely, there was a
general protest that the plan would be too painful for some parties and too
risky for all; it was the generous voluntary offering of the Son of God that
settled the question. Those who embrace the plan wholeheartedly on this earth
are the Elect, "the people of the Plan," chosen "from the foundation of the
world"; they form on earth a community dedicated to "the faithful working out
of God's plan" in close cooperation with the heavenly hosts; they alone have
access to the heavenly hidden treasure, because they alone covet and seek it.
What most thrills the psalmist of Qumran as he sings of the bounteous
fountain of God's hidden treasures is the thought that he is not only a
beneficiary of God's plan, but was actually taken into his confidence in the
making of it- he was there! When Clement of Alexandria recalls that "God knew
us before the foundation of the world, and chose us for our faithfulness," he
is attesting a well-known teaching of the early Church. The recurring phrase
"Blessed is he who is before he came into being" is not a paradox but refers
to two states of being: if (following Baruch) "we have by no means been from
the beginning what we are now," it does not follow that we did not exist, for
it is equally true that "what we now are we shall not afterwards remain." We
are dealing here not with existence and non- existence but with a passing from
one state to another, sometimes explained as a passing from one type of
visibility to another. It is common to speak of the Creation as a renewing,
even as a reorganizing of old matter, nay as the building of a world from
materials taken from the dismantling of older worlds. Preexistent man had
been around a long time before it was decided to create this earth: the whole
thing was produced, when the time came, for his benefit; and though he was
created last of all to take it over, in his real nature he is older than any
of it. He is the child of an earlier, spiritual birth or creation.
Nothing could be more gratifying to the ego or consoling to the afflicted
spirit of mortals than the secret intimation of a glorious past and an exalted
parentage. The exciting foster-parent illusion was exploited by the Gnostics
for all it was worth; but the idea was no invention of theirs: it was the
thought of his preexistent glory that was Job's real comfort, "Where wast thou
when I laid the foundations of the earth. . . when the morning stars sang
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" is not a rhetorical
question. For it was the recollection of that same Creation hymn of joy and
their part in it that sustained the Sons of Light in the midst of terrible
reverses. "If you could see your real image which came into being before
you," says a logion of Jesus, "then you would be willing to endure anything!"
The author of the Thanksgiving Hymn is simply drunk with the idea of his own
preexistent glory. Such glory, according to the Johannine writings, belongs
not only to the Lord but to all who follow him.
But why leave one's heavenly home for a dismal earthly one? To that
question, constantly reiterated in the Mandaean writings, the Gnostic answer
was that we were forced to make the move as a punishment; but the "Treasure"
doctrine was the very opposite, we are here as a reward, enjoying an
opportunity to achieve yet greater things by being tried and tested, "that
each one might be promoted, according to his intelligence and the perfections
of his way, or be retarded according to his wrong-doings." This is the
well-known doctrine of the Two Ways: For this reason the world has existed
through the ages, says the Clementine Recognitions, so that the spirits
destined to come here might fulfill their number, and here make their choice
between the upper and the lower worlds, both of which are represented here.
In what has been regarded as the oldest ritual document in existence, the
so-called Shabako Stone from Memphis, we find the concept full-blown: "To him
who doeth good will be given Life and [off Salvation [htp]. To him who doeth
evil will be given the Death of the Condemned [criminal] . . . according to
that decree, conceived in the heart and brought forth by the tongue, which
shall be the measure of all things."
The element of opposition necessary for such a test is provided by the
adversary, who in the beginning openly mocked God's plan and set up his own
plan in opposition to it. Being cast out of heaven with his followers by main
force, he continues upon this earth during the set time allowed him by God's
plan (for the irony of his situation is that he is Mephistopheles, unwillingly
if not unwittingly contributing to the operation of that plan), attempting to
wreck the whole enterprise by drawing off as many spirits and as much material
as possible into his own camp. The devil and his hosts claim the Treasure for
their own and attempt to pirate the treasure ships that cruise between the
worlds, using the loot in the outfitting of their own dark worlds. A
neglected leitmotif of the New Testament is the continuation on earth of the
personal feud between the Lord and the adversary begun at the foundation of
the world: from the first each recognizes the other as his old opponent and
rival; they are matched at every point- each claims identical gifts,
ordinances, signs, and wonders; each has his doctrine and his glory and his
plan for the future of the race. Above all, each claims to possess the
Treasure, the Lord promising treasures in the heavens while the adversary
offers a clever, glittering earthly imitation: it is the choice between these
treasures (for no man can have both) that is a man's real test here upon the
earth, determining his place hereafter. It is the "poor" who recognize and
seek the true treasures, since they who are "rich as to the things of this
world" have deliberately chosen the fraudulent imitation.
In coming to earth each man leaves his particular treasure, or his share
of the Treasure, behind him in heaven, safely kept in trust ("under God's
throne") awaiting his return. One has here below the opportunity of enhancing
one's treasure in heaven by meritorious actions, and also the risk of losing
it entirely by neglecting it in his search for earthly treasure. Hence the
passionate appeals to men to remember their tremendous stake on the other side
and "not to defraud themselves of the glory that awaits them" by seeking the
things of the world. To make the "treasure" test a fair one, the two
treasures are placed before us on an equal footing (the doctrine of the Two
Ways), their two natures being mingled in exactly equal portions in every
human being. To neutralize what would otherwise be the overpowering appeal of
the heavenly treasure, the memory of its former glories has been erased from
the mind of man, which is thus in a state of equilibrium, enjoying by "the
ancient law of liberty" complete freedom to choose whatever it will. In this
state, whatever choice is made represents the true heart and mind of the one
who makes it. What conditions the Elect to make the right choice is no unfair
advantage of instruction, for all men are aware of the issues involved, but a
besetting nostalgia, a constant vague yearning for one's distant treasure and
happy heavenly home. This theme, akin to the Platonic doctrine of anamnesis,
runs through all the Apocrypha and scriptures; it is beautifully expressed in
the Hymn of the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas.
In this classic tale, a king's son has come down to earth to find a pearl
which he is to return to its heavenly depository; here below he becomes
defiled with the things of the world until a letter from heaven, signed by all
the Great and Mighty Ones, recalls to him his true heritage and his purpose in
coming to earth, whereupon he casts off his earthly garments and with the
pearl returns to the waiting arms of his loved ones in the royal courts on
high and to his robe of glory that has been carefully kept for him in the
Treasury. Our various "treasure" texts consistently refer to going to heaven
as a return, a joyful homecoming, in which one follows the steps of Adam "back
to the Treasury of Life from which he came forth." A great deal is said about
a garment that one changes in passing from one stage to another, the final
garment of glory being often equated to the Treasure itself. This garment
introduces us to the very important ritual aspect of the treasure story, for
it is generally understood that one can return to one's heavenly treasure only
by the careful observance of certain rites and ordinances, which provide the
means both of receiving instruction and demonstrating obedience. In the
Mandaean economy the ordinances are the Treasure, the knowledge of the proper
procedures being the very knowledge by which the elements are controlled and
the spirit of man exalted. The other sectaries are hardly less concerned with
ordinances, however, the paradox of Qumran being that a society that fled from
the rites of the temple at Jerusalem should become completely engrossed in yet
more rites and ordinances once it was in the desert. Moreover, the most
elaborate of all discourses on the initiatory rites are those of the Coptic
Christians.
As teacher and administrator of the ordinances, the priest holds the key
to the spiritual Treasure House in which "the merit accruing from ceremonial
worship is accumulated." These ordinances, imported directly from that
Treasury of Light to which they alone offer the means of return, are types of
what is done above; through them "souls are led to the Treasury of Light. . .
. Between us and the Great King of the Treasury of Light are many steps and
veils," and it is only by "giving the proper replies to the Guardians" that
one is able to approach and finally enter the Treasury of Light. The
ordinances are most secret (they are usually called "mysteries"), and it is
through their scrupulous observance that every man "puts his own treasure in
order."
The archetype whom all must follow in the ordinances as is Adam, whose
true home is the "Treasury of Light," and who belongs with all his children
"to the Father who existed from the beginning." The preexistent Adam, "the
Adam of Light," having descended to earth fell into a deep sleep, from which
he awoke with his mind erased like that of a little child. He was thus in a
state to undergo impartial testing, but in his new helplessness he needed
instruction. This was provided by a special emissary from the Treasury of
Light, the "Sent One." The Sent One is often a commission of three, the "Three
Great Men" who wakened Adam from his sleep and immediately set about teaching
him what he should know and do in order to return to the House of Light from
which he had come. The Sent One may be Michael, Gabriel, or the Lord himself,
but whoever holds that office always has the same calling, namely to assist
the souls of men to return to the Treasury of Light: when the Lord, as the
supreme example of the Sent One, descends below to deliver the spirits that
sit in darkness, they hail him as "Son of Glory, Son of Lights and of the
Treasures." Always a stranger on earth, recognized only by the "Poor," the
Sent One comes to bring a treasure, and indeed he is sometimes called the
Treasure, for he alone brings the knowledge men must have to return to the
Father of Lights. Letters sent from above to help men in their need, the
prototype of those "Letters from Heaven" that have haunted Christian and
Moslem society through the centuries, being directives or passports for
getting to the Treasure House, if not written deeds to the Treasure itself
(the scriptures are rated as such), are themselves among the Treasures of
Heaven.
While a treasure is anything precious and hidden, the early Christian
idea of what was precious differed noticeably from the abstract and
allegorical "spiritual" treasures of the philosophizing churchmen of a later
time. The Patristic writers, trained in the schools, are offended and annoyed
by the way in which many Christians cling to the old literalism of the Early
Church. When primitive Christians thought of a treasure, it had to be
something real and tangible; theirs was the tradition of the Jews before them,
for whom the delights of the other world "though including spiritual and
intellectual joys are most tangible delights of a completely pleasing physical
and social environment." Much has been written about early Christian and
Jewish concepts of time, but where the other world is concerned, the ideas of
space are at least equally important. With what care Luke tells us exactly
where the angel stood in the temple and exactly where on the map he found
Mary! What tireless comings and goings and what constant concern with being in
one place or another fill the pages of the gospels! If we are not to think in
terms of real time and place, why this persistent use of familiar words that
suggest nothing else? Scholars have pointed out that it is impossible to take
such formulaic expressions as "to visit the earth" and "he went and preached"
(referring to the descensus) in any but the most literal sense. The
insistence of our sources on depicting the hereafter in terms of "places"
(topoi, the ma `man of the Dead Sea Scrolls) is a constant reminder that
"heaven is not only a state but a place." True, it is so far away that our
sun "and all the world of men" look like nothing but a tiny speck of dust,
"because of the vast distance at which it is removed"; but for all that it is
still the same universe, and all made of the same basic materials.
This preoccupation with locus assumes a plurality of worlds, and indeed
in our "treasure" texts we often find worlds, earths, and kosmoses in the
plural. It is only the fallen angels, in fact, led by the blind Samael, who
insist: "We are alone, and there is none beside us"! To the Sons of Light, on
the other hand, there is opened up the grandiose vision of the "worlds" united
in the common knowledge of him who made them, exchanging joyful and
affectionate messages as they "keep faith with one another" in the common plan
and "talk to each other. . . and establish concord, each contributing
something of its own" to the common interest. The members of the vast complex
are kept in perfect accord by the sustaining Word of God, which reaches all
alike, since it possesses "through the power of the Treasure" the capacity for
traveling for unlimited distances with inexpressible speed. This Word is also
the Son, who "has betaken himself to the numberless hidden worlds which have
come to know him." The messages may also be borne by special messengers and
inspectors, angels with special assignments and marvelous powers of getting
around, who constantly go forth on their missions and return with their
reports.
With all its perfect unity and harmony, the system presents a scene not
of monotonous uniformity but rather of endless and delightful variety: "They
are all different one from the other, but He hath not made any one of them
superfluous, the one exchangeth what is good, [in it] with the other. " At a
new creation there is a reshuffling of elements, like the rearranging of notes
in the musical scale to make a new composition; it is even suggested, as we
have noted, that old worlds may be dismantled to supply stuff for the making
of newer and better ones.
Beginning with the very old Egyptian idea, recently examined by E. A. E.
Reymond, that the creation of the world was really a re-creation by
"transforming substances" that had already been used in the creation of other
worlds, the Jewish and Christian apocryphal writers envisage a process by
which the stuff of worlds is alternately organized into new stars and planets,
and when these have served their time, scrapped, decontaminated, and reused in
yet more new worlds. This "Urstoff" that is being constantly recycled is the
Tohuwabohu of some Jewish teachers, according to Weiss, who saw the ultimate
forms of matter in fire and ice. Likewise, according to the same authority,
the world-holocaust of the Stoics was merely a necessary preparation for the
making of new worlds from old materials. The whole thrust of Weiss's book is
that until the early Christian apologists, we find no trace anywhere of a
doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, the Creation being everywhere conceived of as
the act of organizing "matter unorganized" (amorphos hyle), bringing order
from disorder, the basic prerequisites for the work being space (chora) and
unorganized matter.
And so we have in the Pistis Sophia, continuing the Egyptian teachings,
the picture of a constant remixing (kerasomos) going on in the universe in
which old, worn-out, contaminated substances, the refuse (sorm) of worn-out
worlds and kingdoms (247-250), is first thrown out on the scrap-heap and
returned to chaos as "dead" matter (134,41,68), then melted down in a
dissolving fire for many years (365f.), by which all the impurities are
removed from it (249), and by which it is "improved" (41,68), and is ready to
be "poured from one kind of body into another" (251). This whole process by
which souls as well as substances are "thrown back into the mixing" (14) is
under the supervision of Melchizedek, the great reprocessor, purifier, and
preparer of worlds (35f.). He takes over the refuse of defunct worlds or souls
(36), and under his supervision five great Archons process (literally
"knead"-ouoshm) it, separating out its different components, each one
specializing in particular elements, which they thus recombine in unique and
original combinations so that no new world or soul is exactly like any other
(338).
In this full-blown pleniarism there is no waste and no shortage: "If any
were superfluous or any lacking, the whole body would suffer, for the worlds
counterpoise one another like the elements of a single organism." The worlds
go on forever: "They come and come and cease not, they ever increase and are
multiplied, yet are not brought to an end nor do they decrease. "
It was essential to the plan that all physical things should pass away;
this idea is depicted by the ancient Egyptian symbol of the Uroboros, the
serpent with his tail in his mouth, representing the frustration of material
things or matter consuming itself by entropy. Indeed, the Pistis Sophia
describes the inroboros (which means "feeding on its own tail") in terms of
the heat-death, when it reports that fire and ice are the end of all things,
since ultimate heat and ultimate cold both mean an end to substance. Though
matter is replaced through an endless cycle of creations and dissolution, only
spirit retains conscious identity, so that strictly speaking "only progeny is
immortal," each "mounting up from world to world" acquiring ever more
"treasure" while progressing toward His perfection, which awaits them all.
When the apostles formed a prayer circle, "all clothed in garments of white
linen," Jesus, standing at the altar, began the prayer by facing the four
directions and crying in an unknown tongue, "Iao, Iao, Iao!" The Pistis Sophia
interprets the three letters of this word as signifying (1) Iota, because the
universe took form at the Creation; (2) Alpha, because in the normal course of
things it will revert to its original state, alpha representing a cycle; (3)
Omega, because the story is not going to end there, since all things are
tending towards a higher perfection, "the perfection of the perfection of
everything is going to happen", that is "syntropy." (Pistis Sophia, 358.)
The eternal process is thus not a static one but requires endless
expansion of the universe (p-sor ebol mpterf) (193ff., 219,225, etc.), since
each dispensation is outgoing, tending to separation and emanation, that is,
fissure (220), so that "an endless process in the Uncontainable fills the
Boundless" (219). This is the Egyptian paradox of expanding circles of life
that go on to fill the physical universe and then go on without end. Such a
thing is possible because of a force that is primal and self-existent, having
no dependence on other matter or its qualities. This is that "light-stream"
that no power is able to hold down and no matter is able to control in any
way. (Pistis Sophia, 227.) On the contrary, it is this light that imposes form
and order on all else; it is the spark by which Melchizedek organizes new
worlds (35); it is the light that purifies contaminated substances (388), and
the light that enables dead matter to live (65; 134). Reduced to its simplest
form, creation is the action of light upon matter (hyle) (64); matter of
itself has no power, being burnt-out energy (65), but light reactivates it
(134); matter is incapable of changing itself-it has no desire to, and so
light forces it into the recycling process where it can again work upon it-for
light is the organizing principle (50). If Melchizedek is in charge of
organizing worlds, it is Michael and Gabriel who direct the outpouring of
light to those parts of chaos where it is needed (130). As light emanates out
into space in all directions it does not weaken but mysteriously increases
more and more, not stopping as long as there is a space to fill. (129.) In
each world is a gathering of light ("synergy"?), and as each is the product of
a drive toward expansion, each becomes a source of new expansion, "having its
part in the expansion of the universe." (193ff.)
The mere mechanics of the creation process as described in our "treasure"
texts display truly remarkable scientific insight. For the making of the world
the first requirements, we are told, are a segment of empty space, pure and
unencumbered, and a supply of primordial matter to work with. Mere empty
space and inert matter are, however, forbidding and profitless things in
themselves, disturbing and even dangerous things for humans to be involved
with, contemplating them, the mind is seized with vertigo until some foothold
is found in the void. The order and stability of a foundation are achieved
through the operation of a "Spark." The Spark is sometimes defined as "a small
idea" that comes forth from God and makes all the difference between what
lives and what does not: "Compared with it all the worlds are but as a shadow,
since it is the Spark whose light moves all [material] things." It is the
ultimate particle, the "ennas which came from the Father of those who are
without beginning," emanating from the Treasure House of Light from which all
life and power is ultimately derived. Thanks to the vivifying and organizing
power of the Spark, we find throughout the cosmos an infinity of
dwelling-places (topoi), either occupied or awaiting tenants. These are
colonized by migrants from previously established toposes or worlds, all going
back ultimately to a single original center. The colonizing process is called
"planting," and those spirits that bring their treasures to a new world are
called "Plants," more rarely "seeds," of their father or "Planter" in another
world. Every planting goes out from a Treasure House, either as the essential
material elements or as the colonizers themselves, who come from a sort of
mustering-area called the "Treasure-house of Souls."
With its "planting" completed, a new world is in business, a new Treasury
has been established from which new Sparks may go forth in all directions to
start the process anew in ever new spaces; God wants every man to "plant a
planting," nay, "he has promised that those who keep his Law may also become
creators of worlds. " But keeping the law requires following the divine
pattern in every point; in taking the Treasure to a new world, the Sent One
(who follows hard on the heels of the colonists) seeks nothing so much as
complete identity with the One who sent him; hence, from first to last one
mind alone dominates the whole boundless complex. Because each planting is
completely dependent on its Treasure House or home base, the system never
breaks up into independent systems; in this patriarchal order all remains
forever identified with the Father from whom all ultimately come forth.
We on earth are not aware of all this because we comprehend only what we
are like. Not only is God rendered invisible by the impenetrable veil of
light that surrounds him, but he has purposely "placed veils between the
worlds," that all treasures may be hid from those who do not seek them in the
proper way. On the other side of the veil of the temple lay "the secrets of
heaven," the celestial spaces that know no bounds, and all that they contain.
The wilon (veil) quarantines this polluted world mercifully from the rest.
"Beyond the veil are the heavens," and that goes for other worlds as well as
this one, for each is shut off by its veil, for there are aeons and veils and
firmaments: "He made a veil for their worlds, surrounding them like a wall. "
Behind the ultimate veil sits Jeu, "the Father of the Treasury of Light," who
is separated from all others by the veils (katapetasmata), a veil being that
which separates that which is above from that which is below. When a cycle
has been completed in the existence of things, "the Great Sabaoth the Good
looks out" from behind the veil, and all that has gone before is dissolved and
passes into oblivion. Only the qualified can pass by one of these veils, of
course; when Pistis Sophia presumed to look behind the veil before she was
ready, she promptly fell from her former glory. Only Jesus has passed through
all the veils and all the degrees of glory and authority. As one grows in
faith, more and more is revealed, until finally "the Watchers move the veils
aside and you enter into the Presence of the Father, who gives you His name
and His seal."
These veils seem to serve as protecting as well as confining fences
around the worlds: The light of the sun in its true nature (morphe) is not
seen in this place, we are told, because it passes through "many veils and
regions (topoi)" before reaching us; its protective function is represented
by a wonderful super-bird, called "the guardian of the inhabited earth,"
because "by spreading out his wings he absorbs (dechetai) the fire-like
(pyrimorphos) rays" of the sun; "if he did not receive [absorb] them, the
human race could not survive, nor any other form of life." On a wing of the
bird is an inscription declaring, "Neither earth nor heaven begot me, but the
wings of fire." Baruch was informed by an angel that this bird is the phoenix,
the sun-bird, which feeds on the manna of heaven and the dews of earth. It
blocks the sun with its wings outspread, suggesting solar prominences or
zodiacal light. At any rate, it is an interesting example of how the ancients
explained things that most men cannot see or comprehend in terms of things
they can.
The plan calls for universal participation in the accumulation of
treasure in a course of eternal progression. The "Treasures in the Heavens"
is heady stuff; E. L. Cherbonnier has observed that the discovery that man
really belongs to the same family as God, "to share in the same kind of
existence which God himself enjoys," is "like learning that one has won the
sweepstakes. " The Evangelium is good news, the only good news, in fact,
since all else ends in nothing. But it is also news, the sort of thing, as C.
S. Lewis points out, that no human being could possibly have invented. Granted
that the Treasures in the Heavens are something totally alien to human
experience, something that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath
entered into the heart of man," they must be nonetheless real. "For the plan
of Salvation, " as E. Soggin has recently put it, "only exists when we are
dealing with reality, not with artificial contrivances; . . . as Hesse notes,
`We are only interested in what really took place, all the rest being of
little or no concern whatever.'" Likewise the religion of Egypt "n'est pas
une mystique, mais une physique," as we are now discovering. This attitude,
diametrically opposite to that of Christian and Jewish scholars (for example,
C. Schmidt) in the past, is gaining ground today. The old literalism has been
dismissed as Gnostic, and indeed much of the appeal of Gnosticism lay in its
exploitation of certain cosmist" aspects of early Christian teaching; but the
basic teachings of Gnosticism and Neoplatonism were spiritualized concepts
that followed the prevailing line of the schools and ran directly counter to
the old literalism of the Treasures of Heaven.
While our sources contain "extremely confused and contradictory records
of creation," all seem to betray "a single organic foundation. " And while
the relationship between them all still remains to be established, it becomes
clearer every day that there was a relationship. The "cosmist" idea is not
the monopoly of any group, Gnostic or otherwise. Indeed, cosmism was
essentially anti-Gnostic. The doctors of the Christians and the Jews who
adopted the Neoplatonic and Gnostic ideas of the schools opposed the old
literalism with all their might, so that to this day cosmism has remained the
very essence of heresy. Still, the very fathers who opposed the old teaching
admitted that it was the original faith of the Saints, and they could not rid
themselves of it without a real struggle.
In view of its age, its universality, its consistency, and its scientific
and aesthetic appeal, the doctrine of the Treasures in the Heavens should be
studied more closely than it has been. What we have presented in intensely
concentrated form is enough to show that references to treasures in religious
writings may well conceal far more than a mere figure of speech.
1. We have treated this theme in "Sparsiones," Classical Journal
40(1945): 515-43.
2. Secrets of Enoch 5:1; cf. 6:1; Jer. 51:16; Ps. 135:7; Job 38:22; 1
Enoch 18:1; Slavonic Enoch (in J.A.T. Robinson, Apocrypha Anecdota [Cambridge:
1897], II, p. 58); Pseudo-Philo 32:7 (in M. R. James, Antiquities of Philo
[SPCK, 1917], 176). "Clouds of radiance drip moisture and life," Psalms of
Thomas 1:11 (A. Adam, in Zeitschrift fûr die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
[hereinafter, ZNTW], Beih. No. 24 [1959], 2); text in A Manichaean Psalm-Book
(Stuttgart: 1938), pp. 203-28. On the heavens as a general storehouse and
treasure house, K. Ahrens, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlândischen
Gesellschaft (hereinafter, "ZDMG") 84(1930): 163, discussing Koran 15:21; cf.
Ben Sirach 43:14ff. In the Enuma Elish, Tab. 7:8, God's "treasure is the
abundance which is poured out over all." On the relevance of this source, see
W. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (Göttingen: 1907), p.246.
3. They are "for a blessing or a curse as the Lord of Spirits willeth."
(1 Enoch 59:lff.; 60:22.) They must undergo a transformation to be useful to
man. (Deut. 28:12; 1 Enoch 18:2; 60:15,21-22; 3 Baruch 10:9-10.) They may
serve "against the day of battle and war" (Job 38:22-23), for unless benignly
restrained they are dark and destructive. (J. A. T. Robinson, Apocrypha
Anecdota; cf. Odes Sol. 16:15-17; Pseudo-Philo 15:5).
4. "I am the Treasure of Life who descended upon the King of Glory, so
that he was radiant in his understanding," M. Lidzbarski. (Das Johannesbuch
der Mandâer [hereinafter, "Johannesbuch der Mand."] [Giessen: 1905], p. 203,
no. 57.) God holds the keys to control and administer the treasure (K. Ahrens,
in ZDMG 84 [1930]: 163); he restrains the elements as by a dam. (1 Enoch
60:lff.), keeping them "sealed up" (Pseudo-Philo 13:6-10) in places of peace
and order. (1 Baruch 3:12-15). His treasury is a shrine of wisdom. (Jer.
51:15-16.) For the Mandaeans, treasure means "capability, ability,
worthiness." (E.S. Drower, The Thousand and Twelve Questions [hereinafter,
"1012 Questions"] [Berlin: Akad-Verlag, 1960], p. 117, n. 8.) An impressive
treatment of the theme is in the Thanksgiving Hymns (hereinafter, "IQH"),
especially 1, 3, 10-11, and 14.
5. Quotation is from E. S. Drower, A Pair of Nasoraean Commentaries
(hereinafter, "Nasoraean Commentaries") (Leiden: Brill, 1963), p. 69, n. 1;
cf. 2 Baruch 54:13; Odes Sol. 4:10. The treasure is a fountain. (Cf. Prov.
8:24.) He has "a multitude of waters in the heavens." Qer. 51:16.) The source
of all earthly treasure is a pool in heaven. (3 Baruch 10:1-10.) The
"treasures of glory" are the clouds and earthly fountains, says the Battle
Scroll (hereinafter, "IQM") 10:12, the latter being fed by the former.
(Pseudo-Philo 19:10; cf. N. Sed, "Une Cosmologie juive du haut moyen-age, in
Revue des Etudes Juives 124 [1965], 64-65.) In the treasuries of the heavens
are "the living waters" (1 Enoch 17:5); blessings pour from "the holy dwelling
and the eternal fountain that never deceives" (IQSb [Isaiah Scroll-Hebrew
University] 1:3); this is also temple imagery (1 Enoch 39:5). God's creative
intelligence is "a strong fountain" (IQH 12:11); Pindar, Olympian Odes 1:lff.;
3:65ff.; and Aeschylus, Persians, ll. 234-47,405; 1207-18, equate the
life-giving gold and silver of the divine treasurehouse of oracular wisdom
with golden grain and silver fountains. The light of the treasure is also a
stream. (Pistis Sophia 65 [132-33]). The creative process is an ever-flowing
Jordan of Light. (M. Lidzbarski, Ginza [Göttingen: 1925], pp. 61-63,67.)
6. 2 Baruch 54:13.
7. K. Koch, "Wort und Einheit des Schöpfergottes im Memphis und
Jerusalem," Zeitschrift fûr Theologie und Kirche (hereinafter, "ZThK")
62(1965): 276. This is one of many recent studies pointing out the relevance
and importance of early Egyptian texts for the study of Jewish and Christian
concepts. So L. V. Zabkar, Journal of Near Eastern Studies (hereinafter,
"JNES") 13 (1954):87; R. Anthes, JNES 18(1959): 169-212; L. Speleers, Les
Textes des Cercueils (Brussels: 1946), p. 28. The five stoicheia "gush forth"
from the five treasurehouses. (Manichâische Handschriften der Staatl. Museen
Berlin [hereinafter, "Berlin Manich. Hs."] [Stuttgart: 1940] 1:30.)
8. Such a scene is depicted in the archaic text of the so-called
Shabako stone (K. Sethe, Das `Denkmal Memphitischer Theologie,' der
Schabakostein des Britischen Museums [Leipzig: 1928], pp. 23-32,60-70); in the
Pyramid Texts (Louis Speleers, Brussels: 1923-24), e.g., No. 468 (895); and
Coffin Texts (A. de Buck, ed., Univ. of Chicago: 1938), e.g. no. 39(166-67);
in Enuma Elish, Tab. 3:132-38; 4:6. On the general Near Eastern background of
the Council in Heaven, see F. M. Cross, JNES 12(1953): 274-77; H. W. Robinson,
Journal of Theological Studies (hereinafter, "JTS") 45 (1944): 151-57. On the
presentation of the plan, see J. Fichtner, Zeitschrift fiir die
Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (hereinafter, "ZATW") 63(1951): 16-33. The
scene is presented in the Serekh Scroll (or Manual of Discipline; hereinafter,
"IQS") 10:lff.; Ben Sirach 17:11-12; 1012 Questions, p. 112.
9. Thus in the Shabako stone (see above, note 8) as rendered by J.
Breasted, The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt (London:
1912), p. 46: "Then he assembled all the gods and their kas [saying to them]:
`Come ye and take possession of the Meb-towe, the divine store-house. . .
whence is furnished the Life of the Two Lands."' Cf. Pindar, Pythian Odes
11:5: "Come to the hidden Melian treasury of the golden tripods, . . . the
storehouse of true counsels, where the host of heroes assembles." Cf. Jer.
10:12-13; 4 Ezra 8:20-21; Ben Sirach 39:12-17; 1QH 1:10; 13:1; IQS 10:1-2;
Odes Sol. 15 and 16; 19:lff.; Acts of Thomas, ch. 136 (A. F. J. Kiijn, The
Acts of Thomas [Leiden: Brill, 1962], p. 137); Psalms of Thomas 1:7-14; the
Second Gnostic Work, 39a (C. Schmidt, Texte u. Untersuchungen [hereinafter
"TU"], 8 [1892]: 254,301). At the great council in heaven the Son said to the
father: "If it please Thee. . . speak, open Thy treasury, and take therefrom a
boon," the boon being the plan of salvation. (Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, No.
250, in E. S. Drower, The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans [hereinafter
"CPM"] [Leiden: Brill, 1959], p. 207); the scene is also described on pages
225 (No. 318), 227 (No. 321), 228 (No. 323), 252 (No. 358, cf. 365-68), 269
(No. 375), 271ff. (No. 376). There is a dramatic description of the opening of
the chest in the Alma Rishaia Zuta 3:199ff. (in E. Drower, Nasoraean
Commentaries, p. 69). So Ginza, p. 493. There are five treasuries of the
senses; when the mind (enthymesis) wants to create, it opens the appropriate
treasure chest to get the things it needs (Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:138-40), the
things being the elements in an unformed state (ibid., p. 54). Though they
were later corrupted by mixture with a lower state of matter or
ground-substance, the physical elements are in themselves pure and holy
(ibid., p. 239); in their corrupt earthly form they are gold, silver, copper,
lead, and tin (ibid., p. 33). God also opens a treasure chest to bring forth
healing elements for man. (Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 46.)
10. Gospel of Truth (M. Malinine et al., Evangelium Veritatis [Zûrich:
1956], fol. XIVv, 5-7.) Smoke, fire, wind, and water were the chaotic contents
of the divine storehouse. (Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 9.) In Ginza, p. 259,
there is a leavening substance, a "Sauerteig der Welt," kept in the divine
treasure house, and from this the world and the planets are created, as higher
worlds are created of a like substance (p. 261). God furnishes "the whole
creation" from "the treasuries of all the winds" (1 Enoch 18:1), which are in
the midst of "secret things" amidst mountains of precious stones and minerals
(ibid. 52:5). On wind as the "Urstoff," see Coffin Texts, Spell 162, II, 401;
on water, see W. Lambert, JTS 16 (1965): 293.
11. For a thorough treatment, see H. F. Weiss, Untersuchungen zur
Kosmologie des hellenistischen und Palâstinischen Judentums (Berlin:
Akad.-Verlag, 1966), pp. 59-74, and notes 81-84, below; see also W. Richter,
"Urgeschichte und Hoftheologie," Biblische Zeitschrift (hereinafter "BZ"), NF
10 (1966): 97; H. A. Brongers, De Scheppingstradities bij de Profeten
(Amsterdam: 1945), pp. 3-18.
12. The idea is carried over into the widespread ritual dramatizations
of the Creation, whose essence is the strict regulation of persons, times, and
places. (S. Mowinckel, Religion und Kultus [Göttingen: 1953], pp. 53-59; see
esp. Pistis Sophia 128-135 [pp. 325-57]).
13. This is an unfailing part of the picture: the Hallelujah chorus with
its refrain of "Forever and ever!" is the closing section of almost any ritual
text. See W. F. Otto, Die Musen und der gottlichen Ursprung des Singens und
Sagens (Dûsseldorf-Köln: E. Diederich, 1956); H. Nibley, "The Expanding
Gospel," BYU Studies 7(1965): 3-27.
14. K. Koch, in ZThK 62 (1965): 271, 281-82, shows that the "creative
word of God" originally refers to a conversation, a discussion with others.
The Egyptian concept is discussed by H. Junker, Die Gotterlehre von Memphis
(Berlin: Akad. d. Wiss., 1940), pp. 36-37, 42,55; the holy ones are "as it
were extensions of the Great God." (H. Grapow, Das 17. Kapitel des aeg.
Totenbuches [Berlin: 1912], p. 40.) See above, notes 8 and 9. May not the
logos of John 1 also be a "council" discussion?
15. Quotation from D. Winston, in History of Religions 5(1966): 212,
citing Jewish and Persian sources. It was a real discussion, in which many
divergent views were expressed, as described in Timothy Archbishop of
Alexandria, Discourse on Abbaton (hereinafter "Abp. Timothy on Abbaton") fol.
10a-12a (in E. A. W. Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms [Br. Mus.: 1914], pp. 232-34);
Ginza, pp. 331-33; Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 361 (CPM, 255); Alma Rishaia Zuta
3:215ff. (in E. Drower, Nasoraean Commentaries, pp. 67,70); Alma Rishaia Rba
4:150ff. (in E. Drower, Nasoraean Commentaries, p. 7).
16. lQM 12:2-3; IQSa (Isaiah Scroll-St. Marks) 1:lff. The world was
created on their behalf. (Ascension of Moses 1:12; 4 Ezra 9:13- 14.) All the
elect were known and the kingdom with "the riches of his glory" (i.e., the
treasure) appointed to them "from the foundation of the world." (Matt.
25:34,41; Rom. 9:23; Odes Sol. 23:1-3; Psalms of Solomon 7:30; Didache 10:3;
Test. Dom. nostri J. Christi in. E. Rahmani, ed.; Mainz: 1899], p. 25.) They
are the pearls in the treasure house of Life. (Ginza, pp. 590-91.) They alone
share the secrets of the treasure. (Ibid., p. 296; cf. lQH 17:9.)
17. IQM 13:2; 7:6; 15:13; IQSa (Isaiah Scroll-St. Marks) 2:8-9,
14-15,20; 1QH 3:20-21. Every major event in the New Testament is marked by the
presence on the scene of heavenly beings participating with the Saints in the
activities.
18. lQM 5:10; Clementine Recognitions 3:53-54, 58; 5:5-7; Oxyrhynchus
Frg., No. 654:Sff.; Gospel of Thomas 80:14-18; 94:14ff.; 19:lff.; Gospel of
Truth, fol. lXr, 2-4; Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4:2. "The Chosen people alone
understand what the others have rejected." (K. Koch, ZThK 62 [1965]: 292.)
19. IQH 1:21; 2:7, 13, 17; 3:19ff.; 4:27; 5:25; 6:10-11; 7:26-30; 10:4,
14ff., 22ff., 29; 11:4-8, 10; 27-28; 12:11-12; 13:18-19; 15:21-22; cf. IQS
11:6-7; 9:16-18; Isa. 45:3; Matt. 11:25ff.; Rom. 11:33, 12; Eph. 3:8-9; Col.
1:26-27; 2:2-3,26-27; Phil. 4:19; Ep. Barnab. 6; Odes Sol. 11:4-5; Gospel of
Truth, fol. XVIr, 17; Test. Dom. nostri J. Christ! 43 (Rahmani, 103); Ben
Sirach 17:11-13; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 120, 126. "In a certain way,
election is pre-existence," writes J. Zandee in Numen 11 (1964): 46, citing
Logion No. 49 of the Gospel of Thomas. Not only the Son of Man but Isaac,
Jacob, Jeremiah, the Twelve Apostles, Peter, etc., are specifically said to
have been chosen and set apart in the preexistence.
20. Clement of Alexandria, Paedagog., l, 7 (in Migne, Patrologiae Gracae
[hereinafter "PG"] 8:321), citing Jer. 1:7,5; cf. Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20. The
awards and assignments handed out at the Creation must have been earned in a
preexistent life. (Origen, De princip., I, 8:4; II, 9:6-8; cf. Zadokite
Document 2:7; IQS 1:7; 3:15; 4:22.)
21. The expression occurs in Gospel of Thomas 84:17; Gospel of Philip
112:10; cf. Secrets of Enoch 23:4-6; IQH 1:19; 13:8; Odes Sol. 7:11.
22. 2 Baruch 21:16; cf. Gospel of Philip 112:10: "For he who is both was
and shall be." "By not yet existing, I do not mean that they do not exist at
all." (Gospel of Truth, fol. XIVv, 22-23.) The formula "out of the eternities
and into the eternities" is found in IQS 2:1 and indicates an endless past as
well as an endless future for man, "for Thou didst establish them before
eternity." (IQH 13:8.) "When he prepared the heavens I was there. . . . Then I
was by him, as one brought up with him; and I was daily his delight." (Prov.
8:27,30; see H. Donner, Aegypt. Zeitschr. 81(1956]: 8-18, for Egyptian
parallels.)
23. With a new creation, things become visible on a new level. (Secrets
of Enoch 24:5- 25:1; 24:2; 30:10-11; 65; 2 Baruch 51:8.) This is consistent
with the doctrine that one sees or comprehends only what one is like. (See
below, note 103.) In the Genesis creation hymn, "everything is as it were
created twice, in two different ways." (J. B. Bauer, Theol. Zeitschr. 20
[1964]: 7.) Albright has shown that "in the beginning" does not refer to an
absolute beginning but to the start of a new phase in a going concern. (Ibid.,
p. 1.) Ex ouk onton refers to such a phase rather than to creation ex nihilo.
(W. Richter, BZ, NF 10 (1966): 97, citing 2 Macc. 7:28 and Homil. Clem.
19:4,9,16,18.)
24. The concept of Gen. land Ps. 94 and 104 is the same as the old
Egyptian idea that the Creation was the beginning of a new cycle of time
following a different kind of age. (K. Koch, ZThK 62(1965]: 257.) At the
Creation, God showed his children "what they did not know before, creating new
things and abolishing old agreements, to establish that which should be
eternally." (IQH 13:10-12; Ben Sirach 36:6-8.) Passing from one life to
another is a renewal (IQH 11:12ff.); one's existence does not begin with the
womb, though a new life begins there (IQH 15:12-15; Apocalypse of Adam 78:1).
When the "treasury of the heavenly King is opened" the Saints become heirs to
a new kingdom by a renewal of the mind. (Acts of Thomas, ch. 136.) To become a
Christian is to accept a new creation. (Epist. to Diognetus 11.)
25. See below, note 79. The Egyptians taught that a creation was the
reuniting of existing things in new forms. (R. Anthes, Aegypt. Zeitschr. 82
[1957]: 3.) Untamed chaotic matter is represented as a raging beast, e.g.,
Pistis Sophia 54(104); 55(105); when the beast is subdued, an orderly world is
composed of its substance. (Ibid., 70 [154].) Can this be the origin of the
common tradition of creation from the body of some slain monster?
26. Clementine Recognitions 1:28. So Ginza, pp. 506, 508-10, 438. The
spirits are equal in age but not in power and glory, in which they compare as
fathers to sons, without any rivalry or jealousy. (Sophia Christi 97:2ff.)
27. Every man has a dmuta-"likeness, counterpart, image"- which is the
"spiritual or ideal counterpart or double. (1012 Questions, p. 11); it is "the
pre-existent pneumatic part of man" (Ibid., pp. 122, n. 5; 161; 173, n. 3).
Thus Paul (in the Apocalypsis Pauli 18:22ff.) and Tobit (in an Aramaic text of
Tobit from Qumran) both see their spiritual doubles. In the remarkable Vision
of Kenaz, in the Pseudo-Philo 28:8, that early prophet sees the spirits of men
walking about in another spirit world while waiting for this world to be
created. This is the Mandaean "Ether-Earth." (Mandaean Prayerbook [CPM, p.
290, n. 4].) Before the creation of the world, "the souls still sat in the
Kanna, without pain and without defect." (Johannesbuch der Mand., 55, No. 13.)
All creatures are double. (Pastor Hermae, II [Mand., 8], 1), and all souls
existed before the formation of the world (Secrets of Enoch 23:5). The related
Platonic doctrine "became a prevailing dogma in later Judaism," according to
R. H. Charles. (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament [Oxford:
1913], II, 444, n. 5.)
28. "God has shed upon man the splendor of his glory at the creation of
all things." (IQH 16:9; 7:24ff.; Secrets of Enoch 24:1-5; 22:8B; Odes Sol.
28:14-15; 41; 24:5; 36:3-5; Gospel of Thomas 90:2; Gospel of Philip
112:12,14-15; The Nature of the Archons 144:20 [in Theologische
Literaturzeitung, 83 (1958), 668]; Pastor Hermae, Simil. 1:1; Mandaean texts
cited by R. Bultmann, "Die neuerschlossenen mandaischen Quellen.......ZNTW 24
[1925]: 108-9.) One is awed by the thought that this thing of wet dust once
"praised amongst the praising ones. . . [was] great. . . amongst the mighty
ones." (Odes Sol. 36:4; IQS 11:20-22; IQSb [Isaiah Scroll-Hebrew University]
3:28.) To know one's true identity is the great treasure. (Gospel of Thomas
80:26; 81:3-4; 87:1-2.) "I am a Son and come out of the Father. . . descended
from the pre-existing Father," etc. (Apocryphon of James 1:333,15-16.)
29. Thus a fragment from Turfan, cited by Bultmann, p. 126: "1 come from
the light as one of the gods, and here I have become a stranger." With
characteristic vanity, the Gnostics reserved such glory for themselves alone.
(Irenaeus, adv. Haeres., I, 6; cf. Odes Sol. 41:8; The Pearl 11,31-44,56.)
30. Job 38:3-7, 21. This last is not stated as a question in the
Masoretic Text, but as a flat declaration (IQM 17:20-27);" . . . peace was
prepared for you before ever your war was," and God will not take back the
promises made at the Creation. (Odes Sol. 4:12-14.)
31. Gospel of Thomas, Log. 84. When Adam complained of his hard lot on
earth, a heavenly messenger shamed him by reminding him of the throne awaiting
him in heaven. (Johannesbuch der Mand., 57, No. 13.) "Endure much; then you
will soon see your treasure!" (Ginza, p. 493; cf. Apocryphon of John 20:19-22;
17.)
32. E.g., lQH 3:22; 7:32; 10:lff., and above, note 19; cf. Acts 1:23,
26.
33. Those who will go to heaven are they who came from there in the
first place. (John 3:13.) They recognize the Lord on earth even as they once
acclaimed him above. John 17:8,10-12.)
34. Justin Martyr, Apol., 1:10,59; 2:4-5,7. So Zadokite Frg. 2:3-6.
"When you lay your hand on the treasure the soul enters the scales that will
test her." (Alma Rishaia Rba [in E. Drower, Nasoraean Commentaries, pp.
44-46].) Only when you have overcome here "is your name called out from the
Book of Those Who Were Valiant, and you become the heir to our Kingdom." (The
Pearl 46-48.) For the reward aspect, see Origen, De princ., 1, 8:4; II, 9:6-8;
cf. Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 4,58, on this "world of testing."
35. Clementine Recognitions 1:24.
36. K. Sethe, Das `Denkmal Memphitischer Theologie' der Schabakostein
des Britischen Museums (Leipzig: 1928), I, 64-65.
37. A specific counterplan is mentioned in Clementine Recognitions 3:61;
cf. 1QH 13:4; 1QS 2:4ff.; 4QFlor. 1:8; Gospel of Philip 123:2ff.; 103:14ff.;
Apocryphon of John 74:lff.; 36:16ff.; 72:10ff.; Sophia Christi 122:lff. There
are those in the Church who preach the doctrine of the Serpent, according to
the Pseudo-Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians in Bodmer Papyrus 10:54:15,
describing his ambitious opposition to God's plan in the beginning. (Ibid.
10:53:11-15.)
38. "Now the Prince, not being righteous and wanting to be God. . .
enchains all the flesh of men." (Bodmer Papyrus, 10:53.) So Irenaeus, adv.
Haer., 5:25; Creation Apocryphon 151:11ff. (in A. Böhlig u. P. Labib, Die
Koptisch-Gnostische Schrift ohne Titel aus Cod. II von Nag Hammadi [Berlin:
Akad.-Verlag, 1962], pp. 48-49); 155:25ff.; 150:27, 35; 151:3, 7, 15, 18, 24;
154:19ff., 14-15; 156:1; Psalms of Thomas 2:1-2; 1:30-37,22-25,43-47; 7:1-3;
Test. Dom. nostri J. Christi 23:43, Acts of Thomas (A. J. Klijn) 204:22-25;
Book of John the Evangelist (ed. M. R. James), pp. 187-89; Vita Adae et Evae
15:3; 16:1, 4 (in R. H. Charles, Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old
Testament, p. 137); hypostasis of the Archons 134:9 (after Isa. 46:9); 140:26;
141:1; Abp. Timothy on Abbaton, fol. XIIIa; Pseudo-Philo 34:2-3; Sibylline
Oracles 3:105ff. (in Charles, 381); Ascension of Isaiah 2:1-9; 7:3-5, 9-10,
15; Secrets of Enoch 10:1-6; 31A:3-5; Johannesbuch der Mand., 3 (14-15,
17ff.), No. 2; Alma Rishaia Zuta 3:215ff. (in E. Drower, Nasoraean
Commentaries, p. 70); Ginza, pp. 18,263.
39. When God sent forth a ship of light "laden with the riches of the
Living," Satan and his pirate crew coming "I know not from where" seized "the
treasure of the Mighty One" and "distributed it among their worlds," until
they were forced to give it up. (Psalms of Thomas 3:1-15, 29-32, 35;
Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 53, 163, 178; cf. the image of the three ships,
Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:50; Psalms of Thomas 12:1-13.) The Second Coptic Work 14a
(ed. C. Schmidt, in Tin 8:236,286) has Christ coming out of the monas of
Setheus "like a ship laden with all manner of precious things," so also the
Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 151-152, 168, 171, 174; in the Johannesbuch der
Mand. 206, No. 58, a ship moves between the worlds bearing the glory of the
Treasure of Life from one to the other. In the Egyptian Victory Over Seth
1:19-22, the god passes through dangerous straits in his ship while Seth and
his robber band try to waylay him. (In the Book of the Dead, the battle of the
gods takes place on board a ship [H. Grapow, Das 17. Kapitel des Totenbuches,
p. 37].) When Adam returns to "the Treasure of Life," he is asked by the
guardians "what wares he is bringing in his ship." O. Leipoldt,
Religionsgeschichte des Orients [Leiden: Brill, 1961], pp. 86-87). In numerous
Acts of Thomas, the Captain of the ship or the rich merchant is Christ in
disguise, e.g., A. Klijn, Acts of Thomas 2-3. The same commercial imagery of
the ship appears in the Johannesbuch der Mand., 84-86, No. 20-21; cf. Ginza,
p. 324. The seven planets are described as floating ships (Mandaean
Prayerbook, No. 286 [CPM, p. 288]); these seven try to rob man of his treasure
(Psalms of Thomas 5:4 [in ZNTW, Beih. 24 (1959): 123]); 1012 Questions, pp.
251, 258. The Ark itself was not a ship but a luminous cloud in space,
according to the Apocryphon of John 73:5-12.
40. Mark 5:Sff.; Luke 4:34-35. The recognition is mutual. (Luke 4:41;
8:27-28; 10:17-18.) The contest is continued in the desert (Matt. 4:1), with
Satan still claiming the rule and challenging the Lord's title (Matt. 4:10,3).
The war we wage here (Eph. 6:12) is a continuation of the conflict in the
beginning. (Hypostasis of the Archons 134:20). Those who follow either leader
here, followed the same there. (John 8:44,7; Odes Sol. 24:5-9.)
41. Apocryphon of James 53:12ff. (the gifts); Apocryphon of Adam 85:1-2
(ordinances); 1012 Questions, II, 3b, 86(226-27) (signs); 2 Thes. 2:9
(wonders); Bodmer Papyrus 10:54 (doctrine); Apocalypse of Elias 1:8ff.
(glory); they are even rival fishermen (Logion, No. 174, in M. Osin et
Palacias, "Logia et agrapha D. Jesu," Patrologia Orientalis [hereinafter "PO"]
19:574).
42. Matt. 6:19-21; 13:10ff.; 19:21, 29; Mark 10:21; 12:41ff.; Luke
18:21-22; 12:21,32; Rom. 2:5; 1 Tim. 6:17-19; Jer. 48:7; Ben Sirach 5:2. Many
Logia deal with the theme. (M. A. Palacias, "Logia et agrapha," Nos.
13-14,34,42,44,50,53-55,77 [in Graffin, PO 13:357ff.].) So the Gospel of
Thomas, 37, 137, 147; Apocalypse of Elias 8:12-13; Psalms of Thomas 1:17-19;
Apocryphon of James 2:53; Acts of Thomas 37,137,147; Gospel of Thomas 85:6ff.;
86:24-29; 92; 94:14-22; in 95:15; 98:31-99:4; Slavonic Adam and Eve 33:lff. It
is important not as to confuse the treasure or to falsify. (Ginza, pp. 19, 40,
123-24, 334, 394, 433; cf. Pistis Sophia 100 [249-51]; Berlin Manich. Hs.
1:223, 228-29; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 75,79,82.)
43. Hence the paradox that the "poor" are the rich. (Epist. to Diognetus
5; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 157.) See below, note 45.
44. Treasures now "prepared" and awaiting the righteous on the other
side (Mark 10:40; Gospel of Truth, fol. XXIv, 11-17) can be claimed only by
meeting certain stipulations (Gospel of Philip 108:lff.). All treasures are
held in trust, "dedicated" (1 Chron. 26:20; Pseudo-Philo 21:3), and will be
handed over when the time comes (1 Enoch 51:1). The righteous "without fear
leave this world," because they have with God "a store of works preserved in
treasuries." (2 Baruch 14:12; 24:1.) Whatever part of the Treasure we enjoy on
earth is not ours but has only been entrusted to our keeping. (1012 Questions,
I, i; 111-12; 122-23.) On the "treasury of good works" as an old Oriental
doctrine, see K. Ahrens, ZDMG 84(1930): 163. One's good works will lead to
future rewards and recompense, says Ignatius, Epist. ad Polycarp 6. The
Christian (Manichaean) and Chinese versions are compared by A. Adam, in J.
Leipoldt, Religionsgeschichte des Orients, p. 109; for the Iranian version,
see D. Winston, in History of Religions 5(1966): 194-95, who also mentions
concealing the treasure under God's throne (p. 212), to which parallels are
supplied by 2 Baruch 54:13; Ginza, p. 281; the Shabako Stone, line 61; and the
Ark of the Covenant "under the feet of the statue of God," W. H. Irwin, Revue
Biblique 72(1965): 164. This is the theme of The Pearl.
45. Matt. 25:14-29. The rich man is welcome to his treasures on earth
but cannot claim treasures in heaven. (Matt. 19:21,24; 6:19-20; Mark 10:25;
Luke 18:22; 12:33-34; 2 Baruch 44:13-15; Secrets of Enoch 1:5; Gospel of
Thomas 88:34-35; 89:lff.; Acts of Thomas 146; 1012 Questions, II, iv, 159
[245].) It is a Jewish, Christian, and Mandaean tradition that earthly prayers
are laid up in God's treasure-house. (Johannesbuch der Mand., 10, n. 2;
Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 379 [CPM, 293].) If a righteous one strays, "his
treasure will be taken from him." (Alma Rishaia Zuta, 1 [in E. Drower,
Nasoraean Commentaries, p. 55]; Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:73.)
46. Apocalypsis Pauli, 19 (text in Orientalia 2 [1933]: 22); cf. 2
Baruch 52:7; 1012 Questions, vib, 379(279).
47. IQS 4:16-18. This is an "Abbild" of the cosmic struggle. O.
Schreiner, in BZ, NF 9(1965): 180; J. M. Allegro, in Jnl. of Semit. Stud.
9(1964): 291-94.
48. For the erasing of the memory, see below, note 60. The "Law of
Liberty" (Khoq kherut) of lQS 10:6, 11, is "the Ancient Law of Liberty" of
Clementine Recognitions 2:23-25; 3:26,59; 4:24,34:10:2; cf. Minucius Felix,
Octav. 27; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catehesis 4:19-20 (in Migne, PG 33:481). Having
such freedom, the wicked have deliberately rejected God's plan. (IQS 4:25-26.)
Though the evil spirits are fiercely opposed to this liberty (Clementine
Recognitions 1:42), the "testing of election for every single individual" goes
on without coercion in "truth, righteousness, humility, judgment," etc., while
the self-willed are free "to go the way of their own heart . . . according to
the plan of his own devising" (IQS 5:3-5), the spirit being "immortal,
rational and independent" (Const. Apostol. 6:11; Tatian, Adv. Graecos 7). The
present test was appointed from the beginning. (IQM 13:14ff.) "This is the
condition of the contest which every man who is born on the earth must wage;
if he be overcome, he shall suffer; . . . if he be victorious, he shall
receive what I said." (4 Ezra 7:127-29; cf. IQH 14:23.) It is "a testing-time
in the common light." (Sibylline Oracles, frg. 18.) See further J. B. Bauer,
Theolog. Zeitschr. 20 (1964): 2-3.
49. A. Adam, "Die Psalmen des Thomas u. das Perlenlied," ZNTW, Beih.
24(1959): 49-54. The Syriac text is given by G. Hoffman in ZNTW 4(1903):
273-83, bearing the title "Song of Judas Thomas the Apostle in the Land of
India." Thomas's situation in India resembles that of the hero in the Land of
Egypt. The pearl itself comes from the other world and is that part of the
heavenly knowledge that is to be found here (Mandaean Prayerbook. No. 252
[CPM, 208-9]); when it is taken away the world collapses (Ginza, p. 517); it
is the pure pearl that was transported from the treasuries of Life (Mandaean
Prayerbook, No. 69). The robe of glory, left behind with the Treasure, is to
be regained with it. (Bartholomew, "Book of the Resurrection of Christ," Fol.
18b [in E.A.W. Budge, Coptic Apocrypha, p. 208]; Pistis Sophia 6 [9-10].)
50. J. Leipoldt, Religionsgeschichte des Orients, p. 86; Abp. Timothy on
Abbaton, fol. 20b. The joyful homecoming is a conspicuous Egyptian theme from
the beginning: there is rejoicing among the great ones, for one of their own
has returned. (Pyramid Texts, No. 606 [1696], 217 [160]; 222 [201]; 212,213,
etc.; Coffin Texts [de Buck], II, Spells 31, 132.) The theme is discussed by
H. Brunner, in Aegypt. Zeitschr. 80(1955): 6-7. The righteous are homesick. (1
Enoch 14:4; 42:1ff.; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 197-200,87.) Going to heaven
is a return. (4 Ezra 7:78; John 17:5-6; 3:7-13; Rev. 5:12.) The Saints desire
"to be received back again" into "the first Church [that] . . . existed from
the beginning," before the Creation. (2 Clem. Epist. 14; Clementine
Recognitions 3:26; Test. Dom. nostri J. Christi, 28 [61]; Abp. Timothy on
Abbaton, fol. 20b; 12a; Gospel of Phillip 115:13.) The Saints find the Kingdom
because they came from there. (Gospel of Thomas 89:27; Pastor Hermae, III
[Simil. 1, the Pearl motif]; Apocalypsis Pauli 43:9; 44:6ff.; Apocryphon of
James 1:27:Sff., 12; 31:13-25; 2:58:2ff.) "The Living Ones will return again
to the Treasure which is theirs." (Psalms of Thomas 1:49; cf. 18:1ff.;
17:20ff.) In the end everything returns to its "root." (Creation Apocryphon
175:4; cf. J. Zandee, Numen 11 [1964]: 66.) Those above are equally impatient
for the reuniting. (Pistis Sophia, 10(16-19]; Manichaean Psalm-Book, II,
201,72, 136.)
51. In reclaiming its treasure, the spirit "becomes what it was before
removing its garment." (Apocryphon of James 2:56:11ff.; cf. Gospel of Philip
105:19; Psalms of Thomas 2:70-72, 74, 77; Acts of Thomas 6-7 (lines 35-55 of
The Pearl); Second Gnostic Work i-a; Ginza pp. 487,26-27; Odes Sol. 11:10.)
The garment is the treasure for both men and angels (Ginza, p. 13); the
garment of Adam and Eve "was like the Treasure of Life" (ibid., p. 243); it is
a protection for the righteous that the evil ones try to seize and possess
(ibid., pp. 247,259, 132).
52. The garment represents ritual in general. (C. Schmidt, in Tin 8
[1892]: 347.)
53. 1012 Questions, pp. 212,241; the ordinances are "the treasures that
transcend the world." (Ibid., p. 245.) "Ginza" means "a treasure, mystery,
sacrament, . . . what is hidden and precious." (Ibid., p. 12.) As guardian of
these secrets and mysteries, the Eldest Son is called "the Treasurer." (Ginza,
p. 150.) The eldest are they who observe the ordinances secretly in this world
(ibid., pp. 153-54), and their highest duty is to transmit and explain these
rites to their children (Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 373 [CPM, 266]). See S. A.
Pallis, Mandaean Studies, p. 192.
54. Discussed by B. Gartner, The Temple and Community in Qumran and the
New Testament (Cambridge Univ.: 1965), pp. 16ff. The temple with its rites is
the earthly counterpart of the heavenly treasury. (1 Baruch 4:3-5.) Since the
Creation, the ordinances have been essential to God's plan. (Jubilees 6:18.)
It is in the cultus that the cosmic plan is unfolded. (N. A. Dahl, in W. D.
Davies and D. Daube, eds., Background of the New Testament, pp. 430-31.) And
the return of the temple is the return of the heavenly order. (4QFlor. 1; 6.)
55. That is, 1 and 2 Jeu and the Second Gnostic Work. Without the
"mysteries," one has no power and no light (Pistis Sophia 55 [107]); this is a
"Hauptthema" of the Gospel of Phi/lip 124. The old temple rite of the
shewbread is an initiation to the Treasury of Light (Pistis Sophia 4:142).
One's Station (taxis) hereinafter depends entirely on the mysteries one has
"received" on earth. (Ibid., 90 [202]; 86 [195]; 32 [52]; 125 [317]; 129
[329].) Without the performance of certain ordinances, no one, no matter how
righteous, can enter into the Light. (Pistis Sophia 103 [263].) Hence the
rites are all-important. (Ibid., 107, 11 [279], 100 [249-250].) One becomes
"an heir of the Treasure of Light by becoming perfect in all the mysteries."
(2 Jeu 76; 1 Jeu 5; Apocryphon of John 53:11ff.)
56. K. Ahrens, in ZDMG 84 (1930): 163; quotation is from D. Winston,
History of Religions 5(1966): 195, giving Jewish and Avestan sources; cf. 1QS
10:4,2:3, Secrets of Enoch 40:9-10. At the fall of the temple "the heavens
shut up the treasure of the rain" and the priests "[took] the Keys of the
sanctuary, and cast them into the height of heaven." (2 Baruch 10:18.) The key
to the Mandaean kushta (initiation rights) is held by the Master of the
Treasurehouse. (Ginza, pp. 429-30.) So also in the Pistis Sophia 133(351), the
ordinances are "the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven." The keys that Christ gave
to Peter were those to "the Heavenly Treasure." (Epistola XII Apostolorum,
Frg. 2, in Migne, PO 2:147.)
57. 2 Jeu 73 (in C. Schmidt, Tin 8:21 1-12); the same image is in Pistis
Sophia 14(23); cf. IQH 17:21: "God has chosen his elect. . . instructed him in
the understanding of his mysteries so that he could not go astray. . .
fortified by his secrets." Through definite ordinances one progresses in the
community and helps others to progress (IQH 14:17-18), teaching of "the
Creation and of the Treasures of Glory" (IQM 10:12-13), and testing the
knowledge of the members (IQM 17:8; IQSb Isaiah Scroll-Hebrew University]
3:22-26). In the Coptic works, all the rites "Serve a single oekonomia, i.e.,
the gathering in of the spirits who have received the mysteries, so that they
can be sealed . . . and proceed to the kleronomia (heritage) of Light. . .
called in the literal sense of the word of the Treasure of Light." (C.
Schmidt, in Tin 8 [1892]: 365.) In Pastor Hermae, 1, Vision 3:5, the Saints
are raised up by degrees, being tested at each Step, to be incorporated into
the precious tower.
58. 1012 Questions, pp. 212, 241. See Morton Smith, The Secret Gospel
(N.Y.: Harpers, 1972), pp. 96, 115,83.
59. J. Zandee, in Numen 11(1964): 44. Adam is the type of the initiate
(Ep. Barnab. 6:11-16) from whom the mysteries have been handed down
(Apocryphon of Adam 85:19ff.). He was privy to the whole plan of creation (2
Baruch 4:2ff.; Secrets of Enoch 30:13ff.), being in the "Creation Hymn" (Gen.
1:26ff.) as "God's counterpart as a speaking, active, personal being" O. B.
Bauer, in Theol. Zeitschr. 20:8), a historical, not a mythological, character
(ibid., p. 7). He "came forth out of the light of the invisible place"
(Pseudo-Philo 28:9) and received the first anointing (Creation Apocryphon
159:5; Clementine Recognitions 1:47). It is "the light of Adam" that leads men
back to the Light (Psalms of Thomas 4:9ff.); and the faithful are promised
"all the glory of Adam" (IQS 4:23). He is called "the son of the Treasuries of
Radiance" in the Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 379 (CPM, 290).
60. On the sleep of forgetting, see The Pearl 34; Psalms of Thomas
15:5-10; Apocryphon of Adam 65:14-21; Abp. Timothy on Abbaton, fol. 15b;
Sophia Christi 106:1-10; Creation Apocryphon 158:25; Apocryphon of James
1:28:14,22-23; Hypostasis of the Archons 137:1-5. It is the "Sem-sleep" of the
Egyptian initiation rites. It is also expressed in terms Suggesting Plato's
Cup of Lethe (Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 7, 57, 117), and as the dropping of a
veil (Sophia Christi 120 [in Tin, 60:280]; Pistis Sophia 131 [336-38]; Ginza,
p. 34); the Cup of Lethe plays an important role in the Greek mysteries; to a
lesser extent the Cup of Memory is discussed by C. Schmidt in Tin 8(1892):
405-6.
61. Called "Three Great Men" in Apocryphon of Adam 66:12ff., they are
three archangels. (Creation Apocryphon 152:23; Sophia Christi 96:3ff.; Second
Gnostic Work 19a.) They are sent down to instruct and accompany Adam. (Ginza,
pp. 15, 33-35.) They are the Three Uthras, "sent into the world to fetch the
Elect. . . back to the House of Light." (R. Bultmann, in ZNTW 24 [1925]: 132.)
Thus Enoch is fetched by three men in white (1 Enoch 90:31), who also visit
Abraham (Gen. 18:1-2; Genesis Apocryphon 21:21). For the Jewish version of the
Three Men in White, see R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman
Period (New York: Pantheon, 1958)9:102-4, 84-89; 10:91-96. Cf. J. Barbel, "Zur
Engel-trinitatslehre im Urchristentum," in Theological Review 54(1954): 48-58,
103-12; K. Rudolph, Die Mandâer, I, 162, noting that these three were the
arch-types of the Sent Ones in general.
62. Cf. Odes Sol. 29:1ff.; 22:1; Psalms of Thomas 5:28; Gospel of Truth,
fol. XIv, 22; 1 Jeu 3; Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:56; not only Adam but every
patriarch after him is instructed by a Sent One. (Johannesbuch der Mand.,
57ff., No. 13, 14; 60, n. 6.) Indeed, the Sent Ones are to help every mortal
back "to the place from which he came." (Ginza, p. 244; cf. IQS 11:1; Luke
1:76-79 [John the Baptist as a Sent One].) The adversary also has his sent
ones. (Pistis Sophia 66 [136].)
63. Being rejected like the poor, the Sent Ones may be identified with
them. (R. Bultmann, in ZHTW 24 [1925]: 124.) The evil spirits accuse the Sent
Ones of being aliens and meddlers in the earth (Ginza, pp. 263-64) and accuse
Adam and his descendants of the same thing. The poor are the true heirs. (4QPs
37:3-10; Odes Sol. 8:6- 13); see K. Romaniuk, in Aegyptus 44(1964): 85,88,
citing Old Testament and New Testament parallels to Egyptian teachings. Their
"angels" have unbroken contact with the Father. (Matt. 18:10.)
64. The Sent One is the treasure. (C. Schmidt, in Tin 811892]: 349.) The
Saints receive the law "by angels" (literally, "sent ones") (Acts 7:53), there
being six angels (cf. six dispensations) (Pastor Hermae, 1, Vision 3:4). "For
there has come from the plains of heaven a blessed man. . . and [he] has
restored to all the good the wealth [treasure] which the former men took
away," namely, the ordinances of the temple. (Sibylline Oracles 5:414-33.)
"Thou didst appoint from the beginning a Prince of Light to assist us." (IQM
13:10.) Enos, Enoch, Moses, and Joshua were such Sent Ones (Const. Apostol.
7:38), as was John the Baptist, restoring lost ordinances and preparing the
people for things to come (John 1:6; Luke 1:16-17; Heb. 1:14; cf. IQS 9:11).
Those who accept the plan had a pure begetting through the First Sent One.
(Sophia Christi 82:12.) Like Adam, everyone is awakened from the sleep of
forgetfulness by a Sent One (Ibid., 94:Sff.) Angels and prophets are sent to
bring men "what is theirs" (Gospel of Thomas 96:7), instructing them in the
mysteries (Mysteries of Heaven and Earth 4:1, in Graffin, PO, 4:428; Bodmer
Papyrus, 10:53). Adam himself became a Sent One to help his children. (Psalms
of Thomas 5:26-28; 4:1-10, 12-17.) The instructions to the Sent One and his
two counselors were to teach Adam and his posterity what they must know and do
to return to the Light. (Ginza, pp. 16,17,18,41, S7ff., 113 [on the teaching
of ordinances], 119); for the Sent One is in special charge of the Treasure of
Life in this world and the other (ibid., p. 96).
65. It was by "a letter of command from the Father" that the Son of
Truth inherited and took possession of everything." (Odes Sol. 23:15-17; The
Pearl.) The "King's Letter" is one's passport to heaven. (1012 Questions, p.
198.) As a knowledge of the ordinances, the Treasure is an actual scroll,
written by the hand of the Lord of Greatness. (Alma Rishaia Zuta 72.) Writing
is one of the Ten Treasures of the Creation. (Pesachim, fol. 54a.) The
heavenly books are "Beweisdokumente" (L. Koep, Das himmlische Buch . . .
[Bonn: Hanstein, 1952], pp. 54-61); for example, The Book of Deeds is a
written contract between Christ and Adam (ibid., p. 64). "Thou hast engraved
them on the Tablets of Life for kingship." (IQM 12:3, discussed by F. Notscher
in Revue de Qumran 1 [1959]: 405-12.) For the Mandaeans the holy books are
heavenly treasures. (1012 Questions, p. 158-59,170, 252.) The holy books were
often literally treasures, being inscribed on precious metals and buried in
the earth like other treasures. (H. Nibley, "Qumran and the Companions of the
Cave," Revue de Qumran 5 [1965]: 191-92.) The idea of books as treasures is a
natural one. "The treasures of the wise men of old are the books they have
left us." (Xenophon, Memorab., I, 4:14.)
66. We have given some examples in "Christian Envy of the Temple,"
Jewish Quarterly Review (hereinafter cited as "JQR") 50 (1959): 97ff., 229ff.;
reprinted in When the Lights Went Out (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co.,
1970), pp. S4ff.
67. J. B. Frey, in Biblica 13(1932): 164.
68. For the first formula, see M. R. James, Biblical Antiquities of
Philo, pp. 44,56. Luther called the second "locus vexatissimus," and indeed it
"makes impossible a spiritual interpretation" of the kerygma. (M. H.
Scharlemann, in Concordia Theological Monthly 27 [1956]: 86,89-90.)
69. Quotation from J. Frankowski, in Verbum Domini 43(1965): 149. See
also below, notes 91, 96, 97.
70. Pistis Sophia 84 (185-86), 85 (189); on the basic materials, ibid.,
pp. 247-48.
71. In the Genesis Apocryphon 2:4, Lamech swears by "the King of all the
Ages [`olamim]" (cf. the common Moslem expressions); God made the "worlds"
(Odes Sol. 16:19; 12:4,8); all the worlds worship the Sent One as "Illuminator
of their worlds" (ibid., 11:12; so Psalms of Thomas 8:13, 6ff.; 1012
Questions, p. 112); "other worlds" have been going on forever (Gospel of
Philip 106:18-19). The created world is plural in Apocryphon of John 21:22;
the worlds assemble before him (Psalms of Thomas 8:6). The angel who came to
Isaiah was of another firmament and another world. (Ascension of Isaiah 6:13.)
The adversary opposed the plan of God "to create another world" and to put
Adam in charge. (Secrets of Enoch 31:3.) A logion depicts the Saints hereafter
moving freely through space among the spheres. ("Logia et agrapha," No. 127,
in Graffin, PO 19:547; cf. 2 Baruch 48:9.) The Father is in the worlds
(kosmois), and the Son is first and highest among those worlds (en toisde tois
kosmois), according to an early Liturgy, in Graffin, PO 18:445-46,448. Each
heaven is completely equipped with thrones, dwellings, temples, etc., and
there are many such heavens. (Creation Apocryphon 150:18ff., 23-25.) The
Archon Jaldaboth created beautiful heavens for his sons (ibid., 150:9-10;
Hypostasis of the Archons 144:5-10), furnished with stolen materials (see
above, note 39).
72. Ascension of Isaiah 10:13; Creation Apocryphon 148:29-30; Ginza, p.
80; they say, "There is only one world, ours!"
73. Odes Sol. 12:3; 16:14-16; Gospel of Truth, fol. XIVr, 11-16;
Apocryphon of John 26:2-3; 21:1ff.; 1 Enoch 2:1; 43:1; 2 Baruch 43:9; Epist. 1
Clement 20. When God created this world, all the other worlds rejoiced
together. (Second Gnostic Work 47a.) The worlds borrow light from each other
and exchange all they know (Ginza, pp. 10-11); they form a single lively
community (Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 379, 303,298-99), all the mysteries being
"shared out amongst the worlds of light" (1012 Questions, pp. 112, 164). In a
pinch, the "Treasures" help each other out. (Psalms of Thomas 23:25.)
74. Quotation is from the Johannesbuch der Mand., 207, No. 59. See also
Odes Sol. 12:4-9; 1012 Questions, p. 213; Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 379 (CPM,
p. 296). This seems to be an Eastern tradition, the others being more
concerned with emissaries and messengers; see the following notes.
75. Second Gnostic Work 45a; cf. Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 23, 66. On
his visits each world implores him to stay "and be our King and bring peace to
our city!" (Ginza, p. 258.) In other words, it is a true Parousia. (Psalms of
Thomas 8:1-14; cf. John 10:16.)
76. Two hundred angels act as interplanetary messengers. (Secrets of
Enoch 4:1.) The business of the angels is to coordinate the working of the
central plan among the worlds. (F. Dieterici, Thier und Mensch vor dem Konig
der Genien [Leipzig: 1881], pp. 78-79.) The heavenly bodies receive commands
from a single center (M. R. James, Biblical Antiquities of Philo, p. 43), the
highest heaven being the "indispensable exchange-center between the spheres"
(K. Koch, in ZThK 62 [1965]: 275); the affairs of "the incomprehensible
expanse of the structure of heaven" are directed from a command-post in the
center (Creation Apocryphon 146:15-20). The rulers dispatch "letters from
world to world and reveal the truth to each other, and there are some souls
that travel like an arrow and cleave through all the worlds." (1012 Questions,
p. 192, cf. p. 164.) Adakas "is a `go-between' between the worlds" (Mandaean
Prayerbook, p. 293), and Manda d-Haiai, called "the Capable" by his brother
uthras, is called "to regulate and to station the uthras in their places"
among the worlds (ibid., p. 294). In the beginning of the Apocalypse of Paul
1:1-2, Paul is ordered "to go down and speak to the planet earth" (le alma de
arga). Visitors to celestial regions in the various Testaments (Abraham,
Isaac, Isaiah, the 12 Patriarchs, Adam, etc.) report a traffic of chariots in
the spaces. (See, for example, 1 Enoch 75:8.) By whatever means, they
circulate ceaselessly among the worlds with marvelous ease. (Ginza, pp. 13,
42.) The Mandaean faithful are urged to "be informed about all worlds" as far
as possible. (1012 Questions, p. 289.) The worlds of darkness also
communicate, but on another level. (Berlin Manich. Hs.1:32.)
77. Ben Sirach 42:24-25; Odes Sol. 12:9; "each is more wonderful than
the other!" (Ginza, pp. 11-13); so also Johannesbuch der Mand., No. 59, 207,
explaining that it is "the power of the Treasure" that makes such rich variety
possible. Among ten thousand times ten thousand worlds "every world is
different from the others." (Gi'iza, p. 152.) Even the worlds of darkness are
all different. (Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:68.) One cannot describe how another
world differs entirely from every other (Pistis Sophia 88:199); no other world
can be described in terms of this one, so different are they all (ibid., p. 84
[183]).
78. Wisdom of Solomon 19:18. On the letters of the alphabet as elements
of creation, see "Sefer Yeshira," texts by P. Mordell, in JQR, N.S. 3(1913):
536-44.
79. The Creation is compared to the smashing of inferior vessels to use
their substance for better ones (Gospel of Truth, fol. XIIIv, 2sff.), or the
melting down of scrap metal for reuse (Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 11), or the
breaking of an egg that a more perfect form might emerge (Clementine
Recognitions 3:27-29; cf. 1012 Questions, p. 183; Ginza, pp. 83-84). God
spares some worlds from dismantling until they have fulfilled their purpose.
(Psalms of Thomas 2:30-31.) While treasure ships carry matter through space
(see above, note 38), the Seven Planets "intercept all the goods bestowed by
the constellations and divert them to the use of the demons" in furbishing
their worlds. (D. Winston, History of Religions 5 [1966]: 193.) The fullest
treatment is in Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:109,111-14,177, where it is even
necessary to decontaminate older materials before reusing! (Ibid., pp. 113-14,
130.)
80. E. A. E. Reymond, The Mystical Origin of the Egyptian Temple
(Manchester Univ. Press: 1969), p. 187.
81. H. F. Weiss, Hellenist. Judentum, pp. 92-99.
82. Ibid., pp. 22ff.
83. Ibid., p. 146.
84. Ibid., pp. 29-36, citing many sources. It is the business of the
Demiurge to organize rather than to produce out of nothing. (Ibid., pp. 44ff.)
85. 1012 Questions, p. 164. "There is abundant room in thy Paradise, and
nothing is useless therein." (Odes Sol. 11:20.) There is a remarkable picture
of the struggle for survival, however, when life began in the waters: "They
attacked one another and slew one another, saying to one another: `Move off
out of my way. . . . Move on that I may come!'" (1012 Questions, p. 184.)
86. 1012 Questions, p. 111; Gospel of Philip 104:18-19; the physis
itself is "imperishable, complete, and boundless" (Creation Apocryphon
146:11).
87. It represents "die Begrenzung und Begrenztheit der Welt."
(E. Hornung, Aegypt. Zeitschr. 97(1971]: 78.)
88. Pistis Sophia 127(323-24); L. Kakosy, in Aegypt. Zeitschr. 97
(1971): 104-5.
89. Worlds come and go; only progeny (sonship) is eternal (Gospel of
Philip 123:6-13); "The man of heaven, many are his Sons, more than the man of
earth. If the sons of Adam are many but die, how many more the Sons of the
perfect man, they who do not die but are begotten at all times" (ibid.,
106:17). "Mounting up from world to world" is from 1012 Questions, p. 192, and
his "perfection" from the Gospel of Truth, fol. XXV, 4-14. The ultimate
objective is to receive the same glory that the Son received from the Father
in the beginning (John 17:22); the Epistle to Diognetus 10 tells us not to
marvel at this-man must become the heir of divinity in the fullest sense (C.
Schmidt, in Tin 8 [1892]: 319-20; Gospel of Philip 100:1ff., 11; 101:lff.;
Psalms of Solomon 1:3-4). It is important not to get stuck "in the middle" and
so delay progress (C. Schmidt, op. cit., p. 335), this world being merely a
bridge, according to the famous logion(Graffin, PO, 13, No. 75). The
fundamental nature of Godhood is to beget and create. (Sophia Christi
87:1-88:1.)
90. G. Thausing, Mitt. dt. Inst. Kairo 8(1939): 63-64.
91. This is the ametretos bathos in which a sector is staked out for a
new creation. (Second Gnostic Work 9a.) Ptahil-Uthra is ordered: "Go down to a
place where there are no Shkinas (dwellings) and no other worlds, and make
thee a world as the Sons of Salvation do." (Ginza, p. 98.) God plans for the
occupancy of all the "spaces" ahead of time. (Gospel of Truth, fol. XIVr,
11-16.) One seeks release by moving "from the more confined to the more
spacious places." (Pistis Sophia 47 [83].) The role of space in creation is
vividly depicted in Egyptian temple-founding rites, in which the king,
representing God creating the world, takes sightings on the stars in a pure
and empty place. (A. Moret, Du caractere religieux de la royaute pharaonique
[Paris: 1902], pp. 130-42; R. T. R. Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt
[London: Thames, 1959], p. 80.) Preparing for the creation of the world,
"Marduk went into the heavens, inspecting the places, and there he established
a new one, an exact replica . . . of the dwelling place of Ea." (Enuma Elish
4:142.) "Space and time are the plan of the world-system." (G. S. Fullerton,
Philosophical Review 10 [1910]: 595.)
92. The work begins with hyle. (C. Schmidt, Tin 8 [1892]: 365,372.)
Although "we do not know whether Hyle was already present in the Treasury of
Light or not," there was a "kerasmos in which Light and Matter are mixed in
various proportions." (Ibid., p. 383.) "Kenaz" in the Visio Kenaz (M. R.
James, Apocr. Anecdota, II, No. 3 [Cambridge: 1893], pp. 178-79) sees "flames
that do not consume and fountains stirring into life" amid a vague substance
taking form at the Creation. Those who were with God "before his works of old"
are later "to inherit substance, and fill their treasures" (Prov. 8:19-22),
referring perhaps to a new, material phase of creation; see above, notes
80-84.
93. It is well for men not to contemplate the bathos too intently.
(Gospel of Truth, fol. XIXr, 8-9; 1 Enoch, frgs. in R. H. Charles, The Book of
Enoch [Oxford: 1912], p. 297; Evang. Barthol., frg. 3, in Revue Biblique 10
[1913]: 326.) "Matter having no fixity or stability" is repellent. (Gospel of
Truth, fol. XIIIv, 15ff.; Pistis Sophia 39 [63]; Apoc. of Abraham 16-17.)
Sophia's first advice to her son was, "Get a foothold, O youth, in these
places!" (Creation Apocryphon 148:12; 149:6.) The foothold idea may have
inspired the ubiquitous image of the "Rock," e.g., in IQS 11:5; R. Eisler,
Iesous Basileus (Heidelberg: 1930), II, 286-87. Preparing for the Creation,
Marduk, having found his space, established the stations (fixed points of
reference) beside the star Nibiru, firmly bolted on the left and on the right.
(Enuma Elish 5:8-10.)
94. Second Gnostic Work 2a-3s; 18a. The fundamentum of a world begins to
take form when touched by a scintilla, but "the spark ceases and the fountain
is stopped" when the inhabitants transgress. (Visio Kenaz.) Matter without
Light is inert and helpless (Pistis Sophia 55 [107]; Berlin Manich. Hs.
1:130); it is the "first light" which reproduces "the pattern of the heavenly
model" wherever it touches. (Creation Apocryphon 146:20.) For "rays from the
worlds of light stream down to the earthly world" for the awakening of mortals
(1012 Questions, pp. 199-200); sometimes a column of light joins earth to
heaven ("Synax. Arab.," in Graffin PO 11:754), even as the divine plan is
communicated to distant worlds by a spark (Second Gnostic Work 29a-30a); it is
the "dynamis of Light" that animates one world from another (C. Schmidt, TU 8
[1892]: 331). God's assistants, "the faithful servants of Melchizedek," rescue
and preserve the light particles lest any be lost in space. (C. Schmidt, TU 8
[1892]: 404; cf. Second Gnostic Work.) The spark is also called a "drop"
(Sophia Christi 104:7ff.); it is "the divine drop of light that he [man]
brought with him from above" (ibid., 119:lff.). The Spark can reactivate
bodies that have become inert by the loss of former light. (Pistis Sophia 65
[134].) It is like a tiny bit of God himself, "die kleine Idee." (C. Schmidt,
TU 8 [1892]: 396; H. Zandee, Numen 11 [1964]: 67.)
95. C. Schmidt, Tin 8(1892): 333. Knowledge of the divine plan is
communicated to the worlds by a spark (Second Gnostic Work 29a- 30a); the
Father "let an idea come out of His Treasury" (1 Jeu 7), even as "the Son of
Radiance" is sent forth to enlighten the worlds" (Psalms of Thomas 8:12); such
an ambassador is himself a "treasure-chamber of Life" (ibid., 3:18). All the
mysteries are "shared out" among 380 Worlds of Light "as they emanate from the
Supreme Celestial World." (1012 Questions, p. 112.) God is "pure radiance, a
precious Treasure of Light, the Intelligence which correcteth the hearts of
all our kings!" (Ibid., p. 123.) The "Emanation" (probole) is a sharing of
treasures, so that "der Lichtschatz ist also der Gipfelpunkt des Universums."
(C. Schmidt, Tin 8 [1892]: 325,266.) "The sparks from the Crown scatter to
every Place" (Ginza, p. 7); the Power of Light, radiating into surrounding
chaos, produces a higher type of topos wherever it goes (Pistis Sophia, 58
[112]), the creation process being the adding of Light and its power to dark
chaotic matter (ibid., 47 [84], 48 [85-86], 50 [90]). Every phoster goes back
to the same Root. (Manichaean Psalm-Book, II, 26, 138.)
96. An important part of God's plan is the providing of a proper topos
for the Saints. (Pastor Hermae, III, Simil. 5:6.) Each topos awaiting
occupants is the result of the diffusion of the Treasure. (1 Jeu 11.) For
"there has previously been prepared a place [topos] for every soul of man"
(Secrets of Enoch 49:2; 58:4ff.), "mansions. . . without number" (6:12). The
work of Jesus was to collect the treasures of the Father into one blessed
topos of meeting. (Acts of Thomas 48.) While the elect have their mansions (1
Enoch 41:1-9), there are special places set apart for spirits in transition
(ibid., 22:3,9). For each specific group yet to be born, a place has been
prepared. (2 Baruch 23:4.) The earthly and heavenly hosts alike have their
assigned places. (IQM 12:1-2.) There is an assigned place of glory for each
hereafter (Epist. I Clem. 5,6; Polycarp, Epist. ad Phil. 9; Apocryphon of Adam
69:19ff.); everyone should know to what topos he has been called and live
accordingly (Epist. 2 Clem. 1,5; Ignatius, ad Magnes. 5; Polycarp,
11;Oxyrhynchus Frg., No. 654:22). No one gets a topos without earning it.
(Ignatius, ad Smyrn. 6; Pastor Hermae, III, Simil. 8:3, 5, 8; Apocalypse of
Elias 6:6ff.) The topothesias of the angels greatly interested the early
Saints. (Ignatius, ad Trall. 5.)
97. The central topos is the Treasury of the true God (C. Schmidt, Tin 8
[1892]: 367); it is "the topos from which all aeons and all cosmoses take
their pattern and their origin" (Sophia Christi 116 [in Tin 60:266ff.]). It is
"the self-produced and self-begotten topos" from which all others are derived
(Second Gnostic Work 1a); it is called "the God-bearing" topos, or "land of
the begetting of gods" (ibid., 21a). Early views of the Creation can be
related to the establishment of God's reign over a particular land. (W.
Richter, BZ, NF 10 [1966]: 96-105.) The colonization of worlds is always a
family affair: "All of them He raised Him up" to "fill the face of the earth
with their seed." (Zadokite Doc. 2:10.) The inhabitants are the progeny or
seed of those who sent them (1 Enoch 39:1; 1012 Questions. pp. 118, 170-71;
Sophia Christi 88:7ff.; 98:1-99:Sff.; Apocryphon of James 1:43:Sff.), called
"chosen seed, or seed of promise" (J. Zandee, in Numen 11 [1964]: 45-46). When
"elect and holy children. . . descend from heaven,. . . their seed will become
one with the children of men." (1 Enoch 39:1.) Simat-Hiia, the primordial Eve,
is "mother of all kings, from whom all worlds proceeded." (Alma Rishaia Rba
6:388ff. [in E. Drower, Nasoraean Commentaries, p. 29].) A colonizing activity
`s, The is described in Pistis Sophia 16(26-27), 25(36-37), 24(34-35).
Lactantius Revue mentions polemically the idea of real seeds floating around
in space. (Div. Inst. 3:17.)
98. "Planting" can here mean create, beget, establish, or assist; that
is, it is the proper work of the "Sent One," according to M. Lidzbarski,
Johannesbuch der Mand., p. 60, n. 6, and Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:53-54. Eden was
God's planting on earth. (W. Richter, BZ, NF, 10 [1966]: 101-2.) "I said that
the world should be, . . . [saying] I will plant a great vineyard, and out of
it I will choose a plant, "that is, the Chosen People (Pseudo-Philo 28:4); the
Qumran Community calls itself a planting (IQS 8:5; 11:15), as does the early
Church (Irenaeus, adv. Haeres., V, 36:1). God's "planting in the world of men"
includes providing necessary physical substances (Psalms of Thomas 3:29-35)
and the "planting" of light in a place of darkness (ibid. 7:17). God, before
the world existed, planted the earth and then planted the Garden in it (4
Esdras 3:4, 6); He is the "Greatest of Gardeners," "the Planter" par
excellence (H. F. Weiss, Hell. Judent., p. 50). Those who share in God's plan
are his "plants" (1012 Questions, pp. 127, 140, 216-17). The human race is
Adam's "planting" (Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 378 [CPM, 283,286]; No. 386 [CPM,
290]). The elect are "the plants that God has planted," and they must plant
their own plants through marriage. (Ginza, pp. 61-62.) The "planting" of the
earth is described as a colonizing enterprise in Ginza, pp. 335, 337; they
move from place to place in winged wagons, looking for places to settle
(ibid., pp. 337-40); the Planter is expected to provide the necessary helpers
for new settlers (ibid., p. 404). Ritually, the planting is a sparsio, a
sowing or begetting of the race. (H. Nibley, "Sparsiones," Classical Journal
40 [1945]: 515ff.)
99. On the "Treasure-house of Souls," see R. H. Charles, note on 4 Ezra
4:35 (Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. II, 567); 2 Baruch
30:2; Pseudo-Philo 32:13; C. Schmidt, in TU 8 (1892): 368. The souls of the
righteous, like the Treasure itself, are beneath the Throne of God. (Sabbath,
fol. 152b.; cf. Rev. 7:9.) The "planting" of a world is always from the "House
of Light, the shining Home," in other words, the Treasure-house. (Johannesbuch
der Mand., p. 218, No. 63.) It is "through the power of the Treasure" that
"earths of radiance" are created, "thrones of glory are established and Chiefs
of worlds appointed" (ibid., p. 207, No. 59), the Treasure being the source of
everything within as well as between the worlds (ibid., No. 57,203-5). Every
world comes into existence by a sort of fission from the Treasure of the
Secret Mysteries. (Oxford Mand. Scroll 55-56.) What Adam plants then grows and
so increases his Treasure. (Mandaean Prayerbook, p. 285.) The bestowing of the
"Treasure of the Mighty One" on men to test them is called a "planting of
plants" in Psalms of Thomas 13:5-14; 3:24-27; Acts of Thomas 10.
100. On the hierarchy of emanations, see C. Schmidt, Tin 8(1892): 367. In
the system of 1 Jeu 5-7, one put in charge of a new topos as "Chief" is a Jeu,
who then becomes the Father of "other emanations to fill other toposes," each
of which in turn becomes a "Father of Treasures"; in the end "myriads of
myriads will go forth from them." (Ibid., 6.) Every Son begets sons, and these
in turn consult in the making of "other worlds" (Ginza p. 240); just so "a
Jordan produces Jordans without number and without end-living waters" (ibid.,
pp. 65-67). Through the power of the Treasure, earths are created, places made
inhabitable, "chiefs of worlds are appointed," so that the Treasures may be
handed down from the older worlds to newer ones. (Johannesbuch der Mand., p.
207, No. 59.) It is perhaps from this Manichaean experience that St. Augustine
derives the image of sparks springing from a central fire, each becoming a
focal center for more sparks, an idea conveyed in the Berlin Manich. Hs.
1:35-36.
101. Quotation from the Second Gnostic Work 49a. He who is begotten is
expected to beget. (Gen. 1:29; 9:1.) In the Egyptian rites, the First-born is
commanded "to create men, to give birth to the gods, to create all that should
exist" (R. Reymond, in Chronique d' Egypte 40 (1965): 61); the work of the
Creation is repeated indefinitely and daily in ritual (H. Kees, in Aegypt.
Zeitschr. 78 [1942]: 48). One becomes a Son in order to become a Father; one
receives in order to give. (Gospel of Philip 123:10-14.) The Son is commanded,
"Go, confirm kings, create new Jordans, and help Chosen Ones [to] arise with
thee to the Father." (1012 Questions, p. 123.) The Sent Ones say to the
Father, "O our Lord, Lord of all worlds, Thou didst command that we should
create worlds and propagate species!" and God informs them that that is the
secret treasure, bestowed only on "one who is our son (plant)." (Ibid., p.
137.) All who behold the creative process have a normal desire to become
creators themselves (Ginza, pp. 67-68), creation being the essence of godhood
(see above, notes 8, 9, 14).
102. The patriarchal line is never broken: "Let us, Father, create other
worlds in order to raise to Thee a planting." (Ginza, p. 241.) One does not
create without the express permission of the "Creator of the Treasures."
(Ibid., pp. 67-68.) He who is "planted from above" does his own "pure
planting" under the auspices of his Planter. (Johannesbuch der Mand., p. 207,
No. 59.) Hence "all gloried in the knowledge that their Father had
transplanted them from the House of life" (Alma Rishaia Rba 1 [in E. Drower,
Nasoraean Commentaries]); in the end, all come "into existence for his sake"
(Johannesbuch der Mand., pp. iv, 30-35,70). Even to the greatest Sent Ones he
is the "lofty King by Whom our Treasure ascends!" (Alma Rishaia Zuta 64-65.)
At the council in heaven the Son was hailed as "the Father of those who
believe" (Second Gnostic Work 29a-30a); this identity of Father and Son to and
with believers is a basic teaching of the Fourth Gospel (R. Bultmann, ZNTW 24
[1925]: 122).
103. "The dwellers upon earth can understand only what is upon the earth"
(4 Ezra 4:21), and the same applies to other worlds. Beings comprehend only
what they are like, so that the Lord must take the form of those to whom he
appears (C. Schmidt, Kopt-Gnost. Schrift, I, 342; Gospel of Philip 101:27-36;
105-106:10; Ascension of Isaiah 7:25; Pistis Sophia 7 [12]; cf. U. Bianchi, in
Numen 12 [1965]: 165; Manichaean Psalm-Book, 11,42.)
104. Gospel of Thomas 95:20-23; cf. Gospel of Truth, fol. Xv, 20- 23; Ex.
3:6; Matt. 17:5-6; Mark 9:5-7; E. L. Cherbonnier, Harvard Theological Review
55(1962): 198-99. "He . . . is within the Veil, within his own shkinta"
(dwelling tabernacle). Mandaean Prayerbook, No. 374 (CPM, 267); his topos is
completely out of our cosmos, being the ultimate Treasure, "the Treasure of
the Outer Ones" (1 Jeu 5; 59; Second Gnostic Work 2a), surrounded by veils and
guarded gates (C. Schmidt, TU 8 [1892]: 402); hence it is "beyond the veil, a
place of shadowless light" (ibid., p. 366; Sophia Christi 116:9ff.), "the
great secret Dwelling of Light" (1012 Questions, p. 163). By night all the
other worlds strain to see the Father . . . because of the invisibility that
surrounds him" (Second Gnostic Work 5a), even as the angels yearn to see the
ultimate place of the Saints (L. Guerrier, in Graffin, PO 9:153; cf. 1 Pet.
1:12).
105. Sophia Christi 118; Second Gnostic Work 47a; Berlin Manich. Hs.
1:118; "the veil at first concealed how God controlled the creation" (Gospel
of Philip 132:23); there is a veil between us and the heavens (N. Sed, Revue
des Etudes Juives 124 [1965]: 39). All treasures are hidden treasures until
God reveals them. (Zadokite Doc. 5:1; 2 Baruch 51:7-8; Evang. Barthol. 3:2-7;
Gospel of Thomas 86:4-5,24.) "If you want to go to the Father you must pass
through the veil." (2 Jeu 42.) God isolates hostile worlds from each other
lest they unite against him. (Ginza, p. 177.) "As the doctrine of the body is
hidden in its treasure-house, so God the Father is hidden in his Kingdom,
invisible to the wastelands without." (Berlin Manich. Hs. 1:151.)
106. A. Pelletier, Syria 35(1958): 225-26.
107. M. J. bin Gorion, Sagen der Juden (1913), I, 59.
108. N. Sed, Revue des Etudes Juives 124(1965): 39.
109. Second Gnostic Work 47a; Pistis Sophia 125(317); Sophia Christi 118.
110. C. Schmidt, in TU 8(1892): 368.
111. Hypostasis of the Archons 143:20.
112. Pistis Sophia 139(366).
113. Ibid., 28(42-44).
114. Ibid., 14(23).
115. 1 Jeu 39; Pistis Sophia 125(317-18).
116. Pistis Sophia 84(184).
117. 3 Baruch 6:3ff.
118. The progress of the soul in the afterworld, with three main degrees
of glory, is found in the Egyptian funerary literature, that is, the Book of
Breathings, lines 2-3, in Biblioth. Egyptol. 17:113. So Pindar, Olymp. 2:75.
For Jewish and Christian concepts, see H. P. Owen, New Testament Studies 3
(1957): 243-44, 247-49; K. Prumm, Biblica 10(1929): 74; K. Kohler, JQR
7(1894/5): 595-602; C. Schmidt, in Tin 8(1892): 478, n. 1;
489-91,496-97,519-21,524-25. Eternal progression is indicated in IQH 7:15, and
in the formula "out of the eternities and into the eternities" (IQS 2:1);
"press on from glory to glory," says "Hymn of Serverus" (in Graffin, PO 5:683;
Second Gnostic Work 5a; Gospel of Thomas 90:4ff.) ("a forward motion, and then
a resting- time."). You master the places in this world so that you can master
them in the next. (Gospel of Philip 124:33-34.) He who receives all the
ordinances "cannot be held back in the way." (Ginza, p. 19.)
119. E. L. Cherbonnier, Harvard Theological Review 55(1962): 206.
120. This idea is forcibly expressed in the Pistis Sophia 88-89 (199),
84(183); Ginza, pp. 14,493-94.
121. J. Soggin, Theologische Literaturzeitung 89(1966): 729. Those who
receive the mysteries of the gospel will also come to know the mysteries of
the physical Cosmos. (Pistis Sophia 96 [232].)
122. A. Piankoff, in Inst. Francais Archeol. Orient., Bibl. Et., 19,1.
123. The Schoolmen have always avoided "cosmism" and still do. (See H. F.
Weir, Hell. Judaism., 79ff.; K. Koch, Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik [Gutersloher
Verlag, 1970], esp. 55ff .)
124. The contradictions are emphasized by S. A. Pallis, Mandaean Studies,
pp. 1, 2, 4, 8, 188, and by A. Brandt, Mandâische Religion, 48ff., while the
"einheitliche und organische Grundlage" is noted by K. Rudolph, Mandaer, I,
141, following H. Jonas. The Mandaeans frequently refer to other Sects, Jewish
and Christian, as bitter rivals, not because of the differences but because of
the many resemblances and common claims between them. (See, for example,
Ginza, pp. 28-30,48-52,135, n. 4,223-32; Mandaean Prayerbook No. 357,251;
Berlin Manich. Ks. 1:21.) While A. Loisy, Le Mandeisme et les Origines
Chretiennes (Paris: Nourry, 1934), p. 142, maintains that "le Mandeisme n'est
intelligible qu'en regard din chretianisme," M. Lidzbarski, Ginza, p. 9,
insists that it is older than the captivity of 587 B.C. Such disagreements are
typical.
125. See K. Rudolph, Mandâer, 1, 19-22,36-41, 59ff. 112ff., 173-75,
251-54, seeing the common source in the early Taufsekten. Since the rites are
"sinnlos und unerklarbar" without the peculiar doctrines (ibid., 1, 254), the
common rites indicate a common doctrinal tradition (E. Drower, Nasoraean
Commentaries, p. 7).
126. In their main points, the two doctrines are in striking contrast,
for example: (1) The idea that all matter is evil heads the list of "orthodox"
charges against the Gnostics. (Bodmer Papyrus 10:51:10; Const. Apostol. 6:10;
C. Schmidt Tin, 8 [1892]: 402-3; cf. Clementine Recognitions 4:23: "absolute
dicimus in substantia nihil esse mali.") Cf. the Gnostic denial of a physical
resurrection with the attitude of the Gospel of Philip 105:9-19. (2) The
Gnostic idea that Adam was "predisposed to evil" and that souls come to the
earth to be punished is the opposite of that of man's preexistent glory. (J.
Zandee, Numen 11 [1964]: 31; Creation Apocryphon 171:10ff.; Cyril of
Jerusalem, Migne, PG 33:481. (3) Gnostic dualism, between physical and
non-physical states of being is anti-cosmist. (U. Bianchi, Numen 12 [1965]:
165-66, 174, 177; S. Giverson, Studia Theologica 17 [1963]: 69-70. (4) The
Gnostics put God utterly beyond man's comprehension, not in the same family as
the "Treasure" concept does (Bodmer Papyrus 10:51:10; Const. Apostol. 6:1);
Israel means "man who is God," according to the Creation Apocryphon 153:25.
(5) Whereas the true Gnostic achieves complete spirituality on earth and goes
directly to heaven (or the sun) at death (C. Schmidt, TIU 8 [1892]: 521ff.;
Puech, "Epist. to Rheginos," in Vigiliae Christianae 8 [1956]: 44-46), the
idea of a long and gradual progress of the soul is older than the Gnostics (K.
Kohler, JQR 7:598; cf. IQS 2:23ff.; IQH 10:28). (6) Whereas pessimism is the
hallmark of all Gnostic systems (Numen 11 [1964]: 17; 12 [1965]: 165), the
"Treasure" doctrine is completely optimistic and joyful. (7) The Gnostics show
the influence of the schools (Bianchi, Numen 12 [1965]: 162), while the other
teaching is characteristic neither of the schools nor of religions in general
(K. Koch, ZThK 62 [1965]: 263). (8) Following the schools, Gnosticism shuns
literalism and turns everything into abstraction and allegory: it is not a
real system but poetic fantasy (C. Schmidt, TU 8 [1892]: 397, 413, 421-22);
but "of mystical rapture there is no hint" in the other tradition (H. P. Owen,
New Testament Studies 3 [1957]: 251; K. Koch, ZThK 62 [1965]: 263).
127. C. Schmidt, TU 8(1892): 345-46; there was nothing the Patristic
Fathers combatted more vigorously than "the cosmist heresy." Having chosen the
way of the Gnostics and Neoplatonics, they condemned all literalism. (Ibid.,
p. 421, and C. Schmidt, Tin 43:524-25.)
128. Tertullian and Irenaeus wavered between the two views. (C. Schmidt
Tin 43:520-21.) The fundamental "Treasure" doctrine of the descensus
disappears after the 3rd century. (F. Kattenbach, Das Apostolische Symbol
[Leipzig: 1894], I, 104; II, 913-14.) The Epist. to Diognetus, 6, compromises,
but for Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, and so on, heaven has become a
state of mind, pure and simple.
"Treasures in the Heavens: Some Early Christian Insights into the Organizing
of Worlds" was published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8
(Autumn/Winter 1973): 7698.
I have reached the stage where I have nothing more to say. As far as I am
concerned, the scriptures say it all. "Behold, I say unto you, that ye ought
to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search
these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah. For surely he
spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of
Israel; therefore it must needs be that he must speak also to the Gentiles.
And all things that he spake have been and shall be, even according to the
words which he spake." (3 Nephi 23:1-3.) That quotation alone spares us the
trouble of an apology for Isaiah. The book of Isaiah is a tract for our own
times; our very aversion to it testifies to its relevance. It is necessary to
remind us of its importance, however, because Isaiah's message has not been
popular, and he tells us why. The wicked do not like to be told about their
faults. Every society, no matter how corrupt, has some good things about
it, otherwise it would not survive from year to year. Isn't it much pleasanter
to talk about the good things than the bad things? The people of Zarahemla,
said Samuel the Lamanite, wanted prophets that would tell them what was right
with Zarahemla, not what was wrong. There is a great danger in that: the many
things that are right with any society can hardly damage it, but one serious
flaw can destroy it. One goes to the physician not to be told what parts are
functioning well, but what is making him ill or threatening him with the
worst.
But, says Isaiah, the people of Israel want to hear smooth things:
"Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things." (Isaiah
30:10.) And ever since, the process of interpreting Isaiah has been one of
smoothing him out. Consider some conspicuous examples of this.
starts out (1:2) calling Israel God's children; he insists on this all
along, God is their Father. It is the first Article of Faith. But they won't
see it (1:3), they want nothing of the doctrine (1:4). They don't see anything
that they don't want to see, says Isaiah. They are functionally blind. They
have deliberately cut the wires, and then they complain that they get no
message. Isaiah is full of obvious things that nobody sees, especially for
Latter-day Saints. The rabbis have always made fun of the suggestion that he
is actually referring to Christ. But we go further than that. We see in the
Book of Mormon even the particular calling of the Prophet Joseph. And who is
to say that we are wrong?
God of wrath, the tribal God. This means we do not have to take him too
seriously. It lets us off the hook. But Isaiah's God is kindness itself. "Come
now, and let us reason together," he says; "though your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18.) There is nothing authoritarian
about him; he is constantly willing to discuss and explain. His most
threatening statements are instantly followed by what seems a reversal of mood
and judgment. He is always willing, ready, waiting, urging, patiently
pleading; it is Israel that will not hear, it is they who break off the
discussion and walk away, turning their back upon him and asking him to please
be quiet.
about good people and bad people, but they are the same! Woe to Israel! Good
tidings to Israel! One and the same Israel. And not just to Israel but to all
mankind; he addresses the nations and their leaders by name. And not only to
his generation does he speak, but to all. Nephi applied the words of Isaiah to
his own people in the desert "that it might be for our profit and learning."
(1 Nephi 19:23.) Six hundred years later Jesus Christ called upon the Nephites
to do the same thing, and the angel Moroni handed the same message over to our
generation. Isaiah has just one audience because he has but one message. He is
addressing whatever mortals upon the face of the earth happen to be in need of
repentance. This takes us to our next point.
different things. Since there is only one message and one audience, this is a
mere quibble. The message is a happy one: "Repent, and all will be
well, better than you can ever imagine!" Only to those who do not intend to
repent is the message grim. Isaiah does not distinguish between the good and
the bad but only between those who repent and those who do not. He does not
ask where we are, he knows that, but only the direction in which we are
moving. Of course, only those can repent who need to, and that means
everybody, equally. Does not one person need repentance more than another?
Ezra and Baruch protested to God that while Israel had sinned, the Gentiles
had acted much worse, and asked why they should be let off so much more
easily. But God was not "buying" that argument. You can always find somebody
who is worse than you are to make you feel virtuous. It's a cheap shot: those
awful terrorists, perverts, communists, they are the ones who need to repent!
Yes, indeed they do, and for them repentance will be a full-time job, exactly
as it is for all the rest of us.
for Isaiah the supreme and unforgivable sin was the worship of idols. Well, he
says that's foolish and irrational but never that it is the unforgivable sin.
The darling illusion of the schoolmen is that as modern, enlightened, rational
thinkers they have made a wonderful discovery: that wood or metal dolls or
images cannot really see or hear, and so on. They labor the point to death.
But the ancients knew that as well as we do. That is exactly why they
patronized the idols. There is the famous story of the Eloquent Peasant from
the Middle Kingdom in Egypt that tells how the rascally manager of an estate,
when he saw a peasant passing by on his way to the market with a load of
goods, cried out, "Would that I had some idol that would permit me to rob this
man's goods." A dumb image would offer no opposition to any course he chose to
take. That was the beauty of idols: They are as impersonal and unmoral as
money in the bank, the present-day as well as the ancient equivalent of a
useful idol.
intellectual virtues was the acknowledgment of the One and Only God. Again,
that was another ancient commonplace. Isaiah does not denounce polytheism as
the greatest of sins. Indeed, a number of researchers have shown that
polytheism as such is nowhere condemned in the Bible. But Isaiah does lay
heavy emphasis on oneness. There is to be no compromise. There is only one way
for a person to go, one God for Israel or the one human race to serve. To
defuse this uncomfortable teaching, the doctors have converted it into a
theological exercise for the schools.
But it is the rites and ordinances that God gave to Moses and that the people
were faithfully observing that Isaiah describes as an exercise in desperate
futility.
The quickest way to get an overview of the immense book of Isaiah is
simply to read the first chapter. Scholars have long held that this is not
part of the original book but a summary by a disciple. If so, that makes it
nonetheless valuable, and indeed it is remarkable that this, the most famous
chapter of Isaiah, is never quoted in the Book of Mormon. Let's take it verse
by verse.
1:2. The people of Israel are God's children, he is their Father. This is
the doctrine they have forgotten, and they will be in no condition to receive
it again until they have undergone the moral regeneration that is the burden
of Isaiah's preaching.
1:3. That doctrine they have rejected: they refuse to hear it.
1:4. Because they can't live with it in their sinful state, they have run
away from it. This is inexcusable; God does not look upon it with forbearance.
He knows that they are quite capable of understanding and living by the
gospel. Accordingly, he is more than displeased; he is angry.
1:5. Yet it is not he who has been giving them a hard time. They decided
to go their own way, openly revolting against him. And their system is simply
not working. They are not able to cope with the situation mentally nor do they
have the spirit to carry it through. Men on their own are a pitiful object.
1:6. The whole thing is sick, sick, sick. Every attempt to correct the
situation fails miserably. Nothing works.
1:7. The result is internal depression and international disaster.
1:8. God's chosen people are holed up, trusting in their miserable
defense, trapped by their own walls.
1:9. The reason they survive at all so far is that there are still a few
righteous, a small remnant of honest people among them.
1:10. So it is time they were considering the alternative, which Isaiah
herewith offers them.
1:11. You are not going to appease God by trying to buy him off, by going
through the pious motions of religious observances, your meetings and temple
sessions.
1:12. It is not for you to decide what to do to please God, it is for him
to decide, and he has not required all this display of piety from you.
1:13. Your most dedicated observances, even following my ancient
prescriptions, if done in the wrong spirit are actually iniquity, not to your
credit but to your loss.
1:14. God is not impressed but disgusted by it.
1:15. Even when you pray I will not hear you. Why not? Answer: Because
there is blood on your upraised hands.
1:16. The blood and sins of this generation are on you in the temple.
What blood and sins? Your evil ways.
1:17. What evil ways? What should we be doing? Answer: Dealing justly,
relieving those oppressed by debt instead of collecting from them, giving a
fair deal to the orphans and assistance to the widow, in other words, showing
some thought for people without money.
1:18. God is not being capricious or arbitrary. He is eminently
reasonable. Is his way the only way? Let him tell you why, and then see if you
do not agree: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." Then a
surprising statement: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white
as snow." Plainly God does not take pleasure in these rebukes, he does not
gloat as men would (for example, Thomas Aquinas) over the punishment in store
for the wicked; he loves them all and holds forth the most wonderful promises
for them. There is a way out, and that is why Isaiah is speaking, not because
he is a puritanical scold.
1:19. Have they had enough? They need only to listen and to follow advice
and all will be well.
1:20. But you cannot go on as you have been. You will be wiped out by war
if you do. "For the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." The "consumption
decreed" (D&C 87) is another quotation from Isaiah.
1:21. You can do it, because you once did. And then you lost it all, went
over to unbridled sex and murder.
1:22. And for what? Property and pleasure, for silver that is now as
worthless as garbage and wine that is flat.
1:23. The leaders set the worst example. They work with crooks, everybody
is on the take: "Every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards," while
the poor don't get a break in court and a widow can't even get a hearing.
1:24. God wants nothing to do with such rascals; he is going to get rid of
them. They have made themselves his enemies.
1:25. This calls for a thorough housecleaning. All that dross must be
purged away.
1:26. To bring back the old order, "restore thy judges as at the first"
(as quoted in the well-known hymn). It is still possible, and God is going to
bring it about. There will yet be "The city of righteousness, the faithful
city."
1:27. There is going to be a Zion redeemed with many of these same sinful
people living in it, along with a lot of converts from the outside.
1:28. All the rest will have to go, but not because God chooses to throw
them out. They will walk away from safety right into destruction; with eyes
wide open they will forsake the Lord and be consumed.
1:29-31. These verses are the only references to paganism, popular cults
that will wither and be burned up, not be destroyed, however, because they
follow pagan manners or forms, as the doctors, ministers, and commentators
love to tell us, but because they were part of the cover-up for avaricious,
hard, and immoral practices.
For the rest of the time I want to talk about those human qualities
Isaiah describes as pleasing to God and those he despises. They both come as a
surprise. As to the first, the traits and the behavior Isaiah denounces as the
worst of vices are without exception those of successful people. The
wickedness and folly of Israel do not consist of indolence, sloppy dressing,
long hair, nonconformity (even the reading of books), radical and liberal
unrealistic ideas and programs, irreverence toward custom and property,
contempt for established idols, and so on. The wickedest people in the Book of
Mormon are the Zoramites, a proud, independent, courageous, industrious,
enterprising, patriotic, prosperous people who attended strictly to their
weekly religious duties with the proper observance of dress standards.
Thanking God for all he had given them, they bore testimony to his goodness.
They were sustained in all their doings by a perfectly beautiful self-image.
Well, what is wrong with any of that? There is just one thing that spoils it
all, and that is the very thing that puts Israel in bad with the Lord,
according to Isaiah. The Jews observed with strictest regularity all the rules
that Moses gave them, "and yet . . . they cry unto thee . . . and yet" they
are really thinking of something else. "Behold, O my God, their costly
apparel, . . . all their precious things . . . ; their hearts are set upon
them, and yet they cry unto thee and say, We thank thee, O God, for we are a
chosen people unto thee, while others shall perish." (Alma 31:27, 28; italics
added.)
God sums up the cause of anger against Israel in one word: "For the
iniquity of his covetousness was I wroth, and smote him: I hid me, and was
wroth." With what affect? It didn't faze the guilty, but "he went on frowardly
in the way of his heart." (Isaiah 57:17.) Like the Zoramites, covetous Israel
was quite pleased with itself, just as in these last days. Modern Israel was
put under "a very sore and grievous curse" because of "covetousness, and. .
.feigned words," that is, greed and hypocrisy. (D&C 104:4.) By far the
commonest charge Isaiah brings against the wicked is "oppression," ashaq. The
word means to choke, to grab by the neck and squeeze, grasp, or press, to take
the fullest advantage of someone in your power, in short, to maximize profits.
It is all centralized in "Babylon, . . . the golden city, ", "the oppressor."
(Isaiah 14:4.) Which gives us instant insight into the social and economic
structure of Isaiah's world. It is a competitive and predatory society, "Yea,
they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that
cannot understand [they do not know what is going on, because everyone is
looking out for himself]: they all look to their own way, every one for his
gain, from his quarter." (Isaiah 56:11.)
The charge applies to our own day, when "every man walketh in his own
way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the
world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall
perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall." (D&C 1:16.)
Babylon had flourished long before Isaiah's day, and it was to flourish long
after. At that particular time it was on the way up again, but the word is
used throughout the scriptures as the type and model of a world that lived by
"the economy." Its philosophy is nowhere better expressed than in the words of
Korihor: "Every man fared in this life according to the management of the
creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and. . .
every man conquered according to his strength, and whatsoever a man did was no
crime." (Alma 30:17.)
In Isaiah, the successful people are living it up. It is as if they said,
"Come ye, . . . I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong
drink." (Isaiah 56:12.) We'll have drinks and a party at my place. And
tomorrow more of the same, but even better, even richer. The economy looks
bright, all is well.
Isaiah has a good deal to say about the beautiful people in words that
come uncomfortably close to home:
28:1. "Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, whose
glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of the fat valleys
of them that are overcome with wine!"
28:2. "Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong [wind], which. . . shall
cast down to the earth with the hand."
28:3. "The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be trodden
under feet."
28:7. "But they also have erred through wine. . . ; they stumble in
judgment."
He describes the party-people, the fast set: "Woe unto them that rise up
early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink; that continue until
night, till wine inflame them!" (Isaiah 5:11.) They are stupefied by the
endless beat of the Oriental music that has become part of our scene: "And the
harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts: but
they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his
hands." (Isaiah 5:12.) And of course there is the total subservience to
fashion: "Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched
forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go" (Isaiah 3:16), in
the immemorial manner of fashion models. An instructive list of words from the
boutiques that only the fashion-wise will know tells us that "The Lord will
take away. . . their cauls, and their round tires like the moon, the chains,
and the bracelets, and the mufflers, the bonnets, and the ornaments of the
legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the earrings, the rings, and
nose jewels" (Isaiah 3:18-21), and of course clothes, "the changeable suits of
apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping pins." (Isaiah
3:22.) Their beauty aids will defeat their purpose as their hair falls out and
their perfumes are overpowered. (Isaiah 3:24.)
Naturally there is the more lurid side of sex, the more reprehensible:
"Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom; . . . ye people of Gomorrah. .
. . How is the faithful city become an harlot!" (Isaiah 1:10,21.) Just as
Nephi "did liken all scriptures unto us, that it might be for our profit and
learning" (1 Nephi 19:23), so right at the outset Isaiah here not only likens
Jerusalem to the long vanished cities of Sodom and Gomorrah but addresses them
directly by name as actually being Sodom and Gomorrah, showing us that we may
not pass these charges off as not applying to us because we live in another
time and culture. Is the scene so different?
The costly fashions reflect a world in which people are out to impress
and impose themselves on others. Everyone is after a career, everyone is
aspiring to be a VIP: "The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the
prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient. The captain. . . and the honourable
man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator."
(Isaiah 3:2-3.) What about them? "I will give children to be their princes,
and babes shall rule over them." (Isaiah 3:4.) So much for their
authority, and why? Because everyone is out for himself in this game of
one-upmanship: "And the people shall be oppressed, every, one by another, and
every one by his neighbour [there's competition for you!]: the child shall
behave himself proudly against the ancient [what else can you expect?], and
the base against the honourable." (Isaiah 3:5.) Everything will get out of
control. A man will take hold of his brother saying, "You have clothes, so you
be our ruler; you be responsible for this mess!" But he will refuse the great
honor, saying, "Don't try to make me a ruler, I'm flat broke!" (See Isaiah
3:6-7.) Because everybody will be broke, Isaiah continues: "For Jerusalem is
ruined," (Isaiah 3:8), all because they stubbornly think they can go it alone:
"Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of
me: and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add
sin to sin" by justifying themselves at every step. (Isaiah 30:1.) The
rebellious people, the lying children will not hear the law of the Lord. The
law of God have they rejected; they reject the law of sacrifice. Oh yes, they
sacrifice, but they do not do it the way the Lord wants them to, "Have I
required this thing at your hands?" (See Isaiah 1:12.) They have violated the
law of chastity, for Israel is a harlot. They have violated the law of
consecration, for they are idolators, coveting for themselves is now their
consecration. They have rejected the law of God, for they will not do things
his way, as they covenanted. (See Isaiah 30.)
The one who sets the supreme example for the people is that most
inspiring and ambitious of all spirits. "How art thou fallen from heaven, O
Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst
weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, . . . I will exalt my
throne. . . : I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation." Isaiah
14:12,13.) He is out to rule the world, which he does, with disastrous effect;
the result is depression and ruin; "Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty,
and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the
inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest;
as with the servant, so with his master; . . . as with the buyer, so with the
seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury,
so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and
utterly spoiled: for the Lord hath spoken this word." (Isaiah 24:1-3.)
Isaiah knows how to describe a world in total collapse, and we have a
rich and very ancient lamentation literature, both of the Egyptians and the
Babylonians, appearing periodically over a span of thousands of years, along
with abundant business documents, letters, and ritual texts to confirm that
such conditions actually did prevail in the world from time to time exactly as
Isaiah tells them, always with the same combination of social, economic, and
political hysteria. Notice the strong emphasis on economy and finance in the
passage just cited. "Ye do always remember your riches," says Samuel the
Lamanite, and for that very reason you will lose them. (See Helaman 13:22,31.)
They are cursed and will "become slippery" is the way he puts it, and Isaiah
has a comparable expression: "The land shall be utterly. . . spoiled. . . .
[It] fadeth away. . . because they [the people] have transgressed the laws,
changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant," to suit themselves.
(Isaiah 24:3-5.) "Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth" (Isaiah 24:6);
few men are left, everything is desolate; there are no crops, it doesn't rain;
therefore, many people are gone into captivity because they have no knowledge,
and their honorable men are famished, the multitude is dried up with thirst.
"For it is a people of no understanding. Therefore he that made them will not
have mercy. He will show them no favor."
Plainly, men are held responsible by God to show some sense.
Self-deception costs dearly: He "frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and
maketh diviners mad; . . . turneth wise men backward, and maketh their
knowledge foolish." (Isaiah 44:25.) They have despised his word and trust
oppression and perverseness, and persist in it. These are tough-minded people.
They hold out to the end, like the breaking of "a high wall." They will hold
out in their ways with great tenacity. Nothing will move them. Like a high dam
when it breaks, it breaks all at once. (This is the principle of "the 29th
day.") First the wall begins to bulge, then everything goes: The "breaking
cometh suddenly at an instant." (Isaiah 30:12-13.) He will not spare even a
shard. The smashup is quick and complete.
All this because everything is out of line. No one can trust anyone else
in this freely competitive society. "None calleth for justice, nor any
pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies." (Isaiah 59:4.) "The
act of violence is in their hands. They shed innocent blood. Their thoughts
are the thoughts of iniquity." This reads like a prospectus of TV fare. Such a
course can only leave a trail of distrust: "The way of peace they know not;. .
. they have made them crooked paths" (Isaiah 59:8); "speaking oppression and
revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. . . . Yea,
truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." (Isaiah
59:13, 15.) It is profitable to break the rules only as long as there are
people simple and gullible enough to keep them. And if you don't play the
game, you can expect to become a victim. Isaiah does not applaud such realism:
"Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest
treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee!" (Isaiah 33:1.) The
Lord goes even further in our dispensation, telling us that we have no right
to cheat even those clever people who are trying to cheat us: "Wo be unto him
that lieth to deceive because he supposeth that another lieth to deceive."
(D&C 10:28.)
Naturally Isaiah takes us into the law courts: "Woe unto them that call
evil good, and good evil" (Isaiah 5:20)-that being the rhetorical art, the
art, as Plato tells us "of making good seem bad and bad seem good by the use
of words," which in the ancient world came to its own in the law courts. "Woe
unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! . .
. which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the
righteous from him!" (Isaiah 5:21,23.) This recalls how the Gadianton robbers,
when they finally got control of the government and the law courts, when "they
did obtain the sole management of the government," at once turned "their backs
upon the poor and the meek" (Helaman 6:39), "filling the judgment-seats" with
their own people (Helaman 7:4), "letting the guilty and the wicked go
unpunished because of their money." (Helaman 7:5.) They "justify the wicked
for reward," says Isaiah (5:23), and he warns them in their own legal language
that God will bring charges against the elders of Israel and "the princes
thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your
houses!" (Isaiah 3:14; italics added.) The stuff that is in your houses really
belongs to them. "What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the
faces of the poor?" (Isaiah 3:15.) "Woe unto them that decree unrighteous
decrees [in their untouchable authority], and that write grievousness which
they have prescribed" (Isaiah 10:1)- serving their own interests by the laws
and regulations they make, "to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take
away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and
that they may rob the fatherless!" (Isaiah 10:2.)
Everything is rigged; everybody is on the take; the harlot city is full
of murderers; the princes are rebellious, companions of thieves; "every one
loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless,
neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them." (Isaiah 1:23.) Even when
right is plainly on his side, the poor man doesn't stand a chance, for "the
churl. . . deviseth wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying words, even
when the needy speaketh right." (Isaiah 32:7.) "For the vile person will. . .
practise hypocrisy, and. . . utter error. . . to make empty the soul of the
hungry, and he will cause the drink of the thirsty to fail." (Isaiah 32:6.)
Real estate is a special province for such people, and the ancient record is
full of the slick and tricky deals by which they acquired their great estates,
from the earliest of Greek preachers, Hesiod and Solon, to the last of the
Roman satirists, including the terribly modern Petronius. "Woe unto them that
join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that
they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" (Isaiah 5:8.)
Isaiah has a lot to say about trade and commerce, "The burden of Tyre,"
the crowning city, "whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the
honourable of the earth." The Lord intends "to stain the pride of all glory,
and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth." (Isaiah
23:1,8,9.) They are a restless lot, these enterprising people: "Peace, peace
to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the Lord. . . . But the
wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up
mire and dirt" (remember Lehi's "filthy waters"). (Isaiah 57:19-20.) "There is
no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." (Isaiah 48:22, 57:21.) Babylon is
at once restless and busy, selfish and carefree; "None seeth me," she says,
there is "none else beside me." (Isaiah 47:10.) She has all the technical and
commercial know-how at her command. All the experts are working for her, the
charmers, the astrologers, the expert analysts, the skillful accountants, and
all will be burned as stubble. In the thirteenth chapter of Isaiah we see the
burden of Babylon, the vast activity, the noise, the bustle, the
self-importance, the consuming hunger for profits in this great world center
that is also another Sodom, a sink of moral depravity.
By a great miracle King Hezekiah of Judah was snatched from death and
given fifteen more years of life. In an outburst of joy and gratitude he
voiced his thanks and his infinite relief at knowing that God was able to give
whatever one asked of him, even life itself; what is the security of all the
world's wealth in comparison to that? And then a significant thing happened.
Ambassadors arrived from Babylon, and Hezekiah simply could not resist showing
them through his treasury, displaying his wealth and power. "Then came Isaiah
the prophet unto King Hezekiah, and said unto him, What said these men? and
from whence came they unto thee? And Hezekiah said, They are come from. . .
Babylon. Then said he, What have they seen in thine house? And Hezekiah
answered, All that is in mine house have they seen. Then said Isaiah to
Hezekiah, Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Behold, the days come, that all
that is in thine house . . . shall be carried to Babylon." (Isaiah 39:3-6.)
The man couldn't resist showing off, and by his vanity he only whetted their
greed. They liked what they saw and came back later to fetch it. He had played
right into their hands.
Isaiah is very much into the international picture in which the fatal
flaw is the assumption that things are in the hands of the great men of the
earth, while in fact there are no great men but just ordinary guys with
disastrous delusions of grandeur. Haughty is a favorite word with Isaiah.
And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their
iniquity; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will
lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. (Isaiah 13:11.)
I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the
golden wedge of Ophir. (Isaiah 13:12.)
The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men
shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.
(Isaiah 2:11.)
Behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, shall lop the bough with tenor:
and the high ones of stature shall be hewn down, and the haughty shall be
humbled. (Isaiah 10:33.)
The earth mourneth and fadeth away, the world languisheth and fadeth
away, the haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is
defiled. . . . Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that
dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are
burned, and few men left. (Isaiah 24:4-6.)
What makes a nation great? Power and gain is the answer we give today;
the thing is to be number one in military and economic clout. They thought so
in Isaiah's day too: Woe unto them that rely on horses and chariots because
they are powerful, but "look not unto the Holy One of Israel." "The Egyptians
are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit." (Isaiah
31:1,3.) No real security is to be gained by alliances, no sword either of the
strong or of the weak power shall overcome Assyria; the Lord had his own plans
for Assyria, and no one could have guessed what they were. Where does security
lie? In digging the defenses of Jerusalem you are merely digging your graves!
The only true defense is the calling of the priesthood in the temple. If you
play the game of realistic power politics, you can't expect any but the usual
reward.
The Assyrians guaranteed security. They were the top nation militarily.
"Go along with us," they said to Jerusalem (and Isaiah has preserved their
letters), "and you will be safe. You are fools. How can God deliver you if you
have no army? You need us. God is on the side of the big battalions." This is
what is called Realpolitik, which has repeatedly destroyed its practitioners
in modern times. When Isaiah tells the people to trust God and not Egypt, the
people say that that is not realistic! So here come the Assyrians, those
super-realists, with their irresistible might, and they were wiped out in
their camp as they were sleeping. The great nations? "Behold, the nations are
as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance."
(Isaiah 40:15.) All the nations before him are as nothing, and they are
counted to him as less than nothing and vanity because they pretend to be
something. (Isaiah 10:33.) "For Tophet is ordained of old" and is waiting for
them right now, ("a prison have I prepared for them," the Lord tells Enoch).
"Yea for the king it is prepared", for Assyria. "He hath made it deep and
large: the pile thereof is fire and much wood; the breath of the Lord, like a
stream of brimstone, doth kindle it.,' (Isaiah 30:33.) Don't be impressed by
"the mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the
prudent, and the ancient." (Isaiah 3:2.) There is only one in whom you can put
your trust. Assyria vanished overnight and was never heard of again, while
lesser nations as ancient as Assyria who could not afford to gamble for
supremacy on the winning of battles are still with us.
As surprising as the traits Isaiah despises are those he prizes, not
drive, initiative, industry, enterprise, hard work, thrift, piety, none of the
Zoramite virtues, though they are truly virtues when they are not vitiated by
selfish motives or a morbid obsession with routine. And let me observe in
passing that work is, after all, not a busy running back and forth in
established grooves, though that is the essence of our modern business and
academic life, but the supreme energy and disciplined curiosity required to
cut new grooves. In Isaiah's book the qualities that God demands of men are
such as our society looks down on with mildly patronizing contempt. Isaiah
promises the greatest blessings and glory to the meek, the lowly, the poor,
the oppressed, the afflicted, and the needy. What! Is being poor and oppressed
an achievement? Are we encouraged to join the ranks of the down-and-outers?
What possible merit can there be in such a negative and submissive stance?
Well, there is virtue in it, and it is the presence of Satan in the world that
is the deciding factor. In Zion, we are promised there will be no poor. That
is because Satan will not be present there with his clever arrangement of
things. But he is the prince of this world, freely permitted for a time to try
men and to tempt them. There he calls the tune.
And how does he try and tempt us? In the worldwide mythology of the human
race the devil is the Lord of the underworld who sits on the treasure of the
earth in his dark kingdom; he is Pluto, the god of wealth, who by his control
of the earth's resources dictates the affairs of men. Aristophanes' last play,
the Plutus, is one long, bitter commentary on the kind of people who succeed
in this world. Indeed, "the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes"
is a stock theme of the world's literature from the Egyptian story of the two
brothers through Lazarus and Dives to the vicissitudes of the Joad family in
the Grapes of Wrath. If we believe Isaiah, the Son of Man himself was
"despised and rejected" (Isaiah 53:3), from which one concludes that to be
highly successful in this life is hardly the ultimate stamp of virtue. For
Satan's golden question, "Have you any money?" has a paralyzing and intriguing
effect that enlists all but the noblest spirits in the great conspiracy: "And
judgment is turned away backward," says Isaiah, "and justice standeth afar
off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. Yea, truth
faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey." (Isaiah
59:14,15.) Whoever refuses to put up with this sort of thing, in their words,
must expect to take a beating. "The Lord saw it," continues Isaiah, "and it
displeased him that there was no judgment." (Isaiah 59:15.) Everybody is
cheating, and God does not like it at all. "Behold the world lieth in sin at
this time, and none doeth good, no not one, . . . and mine anger is kindling
against the inhabitants of the earth to visit them according to this
ungodliness." Such were the opening words of the Lord in this dispensation
spoken to the Prophet Joseph in the grove. The words "the world lieth in sin"
call for a more particular statement in the manner of Isaiah, and we find the
same expression explained in D&C 49:20: "It is not given that one man should
possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin."
(Italics added.) Mammon is a jealous God; you cannot serve him and any other
master. To escape the powerful appeal of the things of this world and the
deadly threat that hangs over all who do not possess them takes a meek and
humble soul indeed, and a courageous one.
What does Isaiah say that God demands of those who would be justified?
First of all, they must be clean of all defilement: "Wash you, make you
clean," he says in the first chapter. (Isaiah 1:16.) Don't make your prayers
when your hands are covered with blood. And the person with clean hands, says
the psalmist, "he that hath clean hands, and a pure heart," is one "who hath
not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." (Psalms 24:4.)
Isaiah agrees: it is "he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh
his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of
blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." (Isaiah 33:15.) The people
fasted as God had commanded and asked Isaiah in perplexity why God had not
heard them. In reply he told them, "Is not this the fast that I have chosen?
to loose the bands of wickedness. . . and that ye break every yoke? Is it not
to deal thy bread to the hungry, . . . bring the poor that are cast out to thy
house?" Cover the naked? (Isaiah 58:6-7.) This is a reminder that our own
fasts require an offering for the poor. God is not impressed by the
magnificent temples people build for him, he owns it all anyway, "but to this
man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and
trembleth at my word." (Isaiah 66:2; italics added.) If they go on justifying
themselves, "Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delighteth
in their abominations" (66:3), God will not curtail their agency; he will give
them all the rope they want: "I also will choose their delusions, . . .
because when I called, none did answer;. . . they. . . chose that in which I
delighted not." (Isaiah 66:4.)
After describing the way of Israel, the burden of Damascus, the burden of
Egypt, the burden of Babylon and of Assyria, in short, the world as it is and
as it should not be, Isaiah in glowing terms depicts the world as it should
be, as it was meant to be and as it was created to be. "He created it not in
vain, he formed it to be inhabited." (Isaiah 45:18.) Under his rule, he is the
Lord and there is none else. Unto him every knee shall bow and every tongue
confess. "In that day . . . the fruit of the earth shall be excellent."
(Isaiah 4:2.) All that remain are Zion and Jerusalem. "The Lord shall have
washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the
blood of Jerusalem." (Isaiah 4:4.)
With Babylon gone from the scene, a huge sigh of relief goes up; at last
the world is quiet and at rest. The golden city, the oppressor, is no more.
(Isaiah 14:4.) The whole earth is at rest. "Good tidings unto the meek; he
hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the
captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." (Isaiah
61:1.) "Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, wasting nor destruction
within thy borders." (Isaiah 60:18.) On the contrary, "with righteousness
shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth."
(Isaiah 11:4.) "Where is the fury of the oppressor?" (Isaiah 51:13.) "Ho, . .
. he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is
not bread?. . . Come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live." (Isaiah
55:1-3.) Wonder of wonders, in that day a man will be worth more than gold, a
complete reversal of values. At the same time the forests return and the trees
rejoice: "No feller is come up against us." (Isaiah 14:8.) Isaiah often
equates the growing wickedness of the world with the brutal and wasteful
exploitation of nature, which has reached an all-time climax in the present
generation. We all know his most poetic lines: "The leopard shall lie down
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a
little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young
ones lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox." (Isaiah
11:6, 7.) In my school days this was the prize illustration of the unrealistic
Isaiah, zoological nonsense. It was not the "nature red in tooth and claw" of
our own neo-Darwinian world. Since then a lot has been learned about the true
nature of certain savage beasts. "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as
the waters cover the sea." (Isaiah 11:9.) "The wilderness and the solitary
places shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as
the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, . . . In the wilderness shall waters
break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a
pool, and the thirsty land springs of water" (Isaiah 35:1, 2, 6, 7); "that
they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand
of the Lord hath done this" (Isaiah 41:20).
And this happy world is for everybody, even as Isaiah's message of
warning and promise of forgiving is for everyone. The sons of the stranger,
taking hold of the covenant, "even them will I bring to my holy mountain."
They will come to the temple, which will "be called an house of prayer for all
people." (Isaiah 56:7.) The Lord God, who gathers the "outcasts of Israel" and
all the "beasts of the field," says there won't be any watchdogs to frighten
them off anymore; it will be a happy time of man and beast. (Isaiah 56:8-10.)
"Great are the words of Isaiah!" We have been commanded to search them, study
them, ponder them, take them to heart, and understand that the calamities and
the blessings therein are meant for our own generation. May the words of this
great prophet prepare us for these calamities and blessings.
1. Jessee, Dean C., "The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision,"
BYU Studies 9 (Spring 1969): 280.
"Great are the Words of Isaiah" is an address given at BYU's sixth annual
Sidney B. Sped Symposium on January 28, 1978.
Even if it were only fiction, the story of the finding of the Qumran
Manuscripts (also called the Dead Sea Scrolls and the `Ain Feshkha'
manuscripts) would be exciting reading. In a hundred journals the tale has now
been repeated of how in June 1947 an Arab shepherd looking for a lost sheep
came across the all-but-invisible entrance to a cave in which reposed "the
first major biblical manuscripts of great antiquity" ever found, "older by
more than a millennium than the Hebrew texts which are the basis of our
biblical translations."
In the same cave with the now famous Isaiah text were found fragments of
Genesis, Judges, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, the apocryphal book of Jubilees, and
the extensive writings dealing with the doctrines and practices of an ancient
Jewish sect that had inhabited that part of the desert in the time of Christ.
Small wonder that "the little world of biblical scholarship has been turned
topsy-turvy by the discoveries," or that "the howling wilderness of Ta'amireh
also has been turned upside down in consequence of the finds." As a result of
this feverish search, more than forty caves have now come to light, many of
them containing ancient writings; for example, the first six caves opened
around Qumran "have produced manuscript material representing an original
collection of some four hundred to five hundred works that included all of the
Old Testament books, numerous apocrypha, both known and unknown, and sectarian
documents of all kinds." From another group of caves nearby, two of which are
described as nothing less than "mighty caverns," even richer treasures came
forth in 1952. The now famous Cave IV at Qumran has yielded three hundred
fragments of writings, some of which are thought to go back to the fourth
century B.C. As a result of these finds "we now have larger or smaller
fragments of every book of the Old Testament except Esther, most of the known
Apocrypha, and many new ones. "
Thanks to this material, the conventional ideals of Christian and Jewish
religion are even now undergoing major revisions. We are told, for example,
that "one conclusion is difficult to avoid: John, so far from being the
creation of Hellenistic Christianity, has exceedingly close ties with
sectarian Judaism, and may prove to be the most `Jewish' of the Gospels." At
the same time we learn that the all-but-discredited Septuagint is really a
very ancient and reliable text, "a literal and faithful translation of its
Hebrew predecessor." As to church history, "All the problems relative to
primitive Christianity, problems examined for so many centuries, all these
problems henceforth find themselves placed in a new light, which forces us to
reconsider them completely."
The texts are packed with matter of greatest interest to Latter-day
Saints. The people who wrote and hid these records had our own conception of
continued revelation, of this life as a probation, of the preexistence and
resurrection, of the dispensations of the gospel with falling away and
restoration; their covenants and ordinances closely resemble ours; and their
book of doctrine and covenants (now called the Manual of Discipline) is
surprisingly like our own, as are their ideas of priesthood, prophecy, heaven
and earth, marriage and eternal progeny, and so on. To go through the scrolls
illustrating these things point by point would require a whole book. Here one
significant illustration must suffice.
Speaking of the Qumran manuscripts, Time magazine recently reported:
The most startling disclosure of the Essene documents so far
published is that the sect possessed, years before Christ, a terminology
and practice that have always been considered uniquely Christian. The
Essenes practiced baptism and shared a liturgical repast of bread and
wine presided over by a priest. They believed in redemption and in the
immortality of the soul. Their most important leader was. . . a Messianic
prophet-priest blessed with divine revelation. . . . Many phrases,
symbols, and precepts similar to those in Essene literature are used in
the New Testament, particularly in the Gospel of John and the Pauline
Epistles.
This was not only a "startling disclosure" but also a very disturbing
one. Many Jewish and Christian scholars heaped scorn on the scrolls years
after their discovery, or even refused to consider them at all, calling them a
hoax, a "conglomeration of words. . . written by an uneducated Jew in the
Middle Ages," "a garbage collection," and whatnot, for a Dupont-Sommer
pointed out from the first, if the scrolls are genuine, then the scholars have
been wrong all along in their conception of Christianity and Judaism. Worst of
all is the maddening habit these writings have of "jumping the gun" on the New
Testament. The Gospel of John, for example, "employs the vocabulary
characteristic of the DSD," that is, the Manual of Discipline, written years
before the gospel. Much of this literature is biblical, and yet it is not
biblical: thus "the hymns in the collection are reminiscent of the latest
biblical psalms, and more especially the psalm in the prologue of Luke. They
draw heavily on the Psalter and Prophetic poetry for inspiration, and borrow
direct phrases, cliches, and style. However, neither in language, spirit, or
theology are they biblical." That is to say, they are not "biblical" in the
sense that modern critics use the word, though they were obviously believed by
their authors to be completely biblical. Either those ancients did not
understand the Bible, or else the moderns don't. Yet Dr. Brownlee is willing
to concede that their rendering of the scriptures "greatly enriches and
improves upon the original form [sic]," and that "it will no doubt receive
considerable use on the part of both ministers and rabbis who become familiar
with it."
Forced to accept the proofs that something like a New Testament church
was in full bloom before New Testament times, Mr. G. L. Harding, who has been
a most active figure in the discovery and preservation of the scrolls, can
only conclude that John the Baptist and even Christ must have acquired much of
what they taught in the bosom of the Qumran community itself: "John the
Baptist. . . must have studied and worked in this building [the main assembly
hall of the sect, near the Qumran caves]: he undoubtedly derived the idea of
ritual immersion or baptism from them. Many authorities consider that Christ
himself also studied with them for some time. . . . These, then, are the very
walls He looked upon, the corridors and rooms through which He wandered and in
which He sat, brought to light once again after nearly 1900 years.
Now with the discovery and admission of the existence of typical New
Testament expressions, doctrines, and ordinances well before the time of
Christ, the one effective argument against the Book of Mormon collapses.
Within the past year a distinguished European scholar has written an ambitious
study on the Book of Mormon, in which he praises it as the most significant
work or historiography to appear in America, but at the same time denounces it
as a fraud and forgery, stating as his proof that "the character of the
forgery is made clear by the revamping of biblical accounts and expressions,
especially in the founding of the Church, baptism, and sacrament as
accompanying the appearance of Christ in America." That is exactly what was
held against the scrolls when they first appeared and almost up to the present
moment: they were accused, like the Book of Mormon, of being nothing but a
phony rehash of the Bible, with a new slant on particulars and a totally
incongruous setting. And had not the evidence continued to pour forth, year
after year and cave after cave ("discoveries tread on the heels of
discoveries," says Mr. Cross), the learned could never have been persuaded to
admit that the documents were anything but clumsy forgeries.
Dr. Cross, eager to allay the misgivings that must inevitably follow the
overthrow of accepted ideas of Church history and doctrine, explains the
resemblance between the Christian and pre-Christian churches as traceable to a
common tradition: both "draw on common resources of language, common
theological themes and concepts, and share common religious institutions."
But this common tradition was not that of conventional Judaism, let alone
Hellenistic philosophy; it was the ancient tradition of the righteous few who
flee to the desert with their wives and children to prepare for the coming of
the Lord and escape persecution at the hands of the official religion. Qumran
seems to have been the camping-place of such holy fugitives as early as the
eighth and seventh centuries B.C., that is, as early as the days of Lehi. The
Book of Mormon clearly states that its people consider themselves to be in
this particular and peculiar line of Israelite tradition. The discoveries at
and near Qumran now prove not only that such people existed, but also that
they produced a peculiar type of literature, and it is to the Book of Mormon
that one may turn for some of the most perfect examples of that literature.
And so the voices whispering out of the dust on the shores of the Dead Sea may
yet provide some of the most powerful confirmation of the authenticity of the
Book of Mormon.
1. Cross, Frank Moore, "The Manuscripts of the Dead Sea Caves," The
Biblical Archeologist 17, 1 (February 1954): 3. The fullest general
description of the finding of the scrolls is still Harold Henry Rowley, The
Zadokite Fragments and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Oxford University Press, 1952).
2. Cross, p. 4.
3. Fritsch, Charles Theodore, "Herod the Great and the Qumran
Community," Journal of Biblical Literature 74 (September 1955): 174.
4. Harding, G. Lankester, "Where Christ Himself May Have Studied: An
Essene Monastery at Khirbet Qumran," Illustrated London News 227 (September
3,1955): 379.
5. Cross, p. 3.
6. Cross, p. 18. It should be noted that the Inspired Version of the
Bible as we have it from Joseph Smith greatly favors the Septuagint.
7. Dupont-Sommer, A., The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Preliminary Report (New
York: Macmillan, 1952), p. 100. Time has vindicated this verdict, which
Dupont-Sommer has repeated in his latest work. (See Time, "Dead Sea Jewels"
[September 5, 1955], p. 34.)
8. Courtesy Time; copyright Time, Inc., 1955.
9. Nibley, Hugh W., "New Approaches to Book of Mormon Study,"
Improvement Era (March 1954), pp. 148ff.
10. Brownlee, William H., "A Comparison of the Covenanters of the Dead
Sea Scrolls with Pre-Christian Jewish Sects," The Biblical Archeologist 14,3
(September 1951): 58.
11. Cross, p. 3; compare Brownlee, "Biblical Interpretation among the
Sectaries of the Dead Sea Scrolls," The Biblical Archeologist 14, 3 (September
1951):58.
12. Brownlee, ibid.,p. 60.
13. Harding.
14. We pointed this out in 1954, (note 9 above), but the recent
admissions of such authorities as Cross, Brownlee, and Harding now lend real
force to the argument.
15. Meinhold, Peter, "Die Anfange des Amerikanischen
Geschichtsbewusstseins," Saeculum 5(1954): 86.
16. Cross, "The Scrolls and the New Testament," The Christian Century 72
(August 1955): 971.
17. Kelso, James L., "The Archaeology of Qumran," Journal of Biblical
Literature 74 (September 1955):145. "The roots of the Sect undoubtedly do go
back to the pre-Maccabean Hasidim," according to Fritsch, ibid., p. 177.
18. Nibley, Improvement Era (May 1954), pp. 326-30.
"More Voices from the Dust" appeared in the Instructor (March 1956), pp.
71-72,74.
Ancient religious writings found in caves and ruins in the Judaean
desert.
The first in the summer of 1947. Other major discoveries were in 1952 and
1956. More than two hundred caves have been explored, and the search still
goes on.
The most important finds have come from eleven caves in the precipitous
walls of the Wadi Qumran, a gorge on the western shores of the Dead Sea, about
a mile from the water's edge near the north end, seven miles south of Jericho.
Also important are the four huge caves in Wadi Murabba'at, twelve miles
southwest of Qumran; and the ruins of Xhirbet Mirdi, on a hilltop about five
miles west-southwest of Qumran. Important finds have come from other hiding
places known only to the Bedouins.
The first was accidentally discovered by a shepherd boy of the
semi-nomadic Arabic tribe of the Ta'amireh. Most subsequent discoveries have
been made by members of that tribe, who have now become expert in the
excavation and preservation of the documents. At first, clandestine digging
(by dealers and monks as well as Arabs) destroyed much material.
In 1949 the experts withdrew, convinced that there was no more to be
found; but the Arabs continued searching with such success that in 1951 formal
expeditions were organized by the British Army and Jordanian government. The
walls of the Wadi Qumran were systematically explored, leading to the
discovery in 1952 of Cave IV, the richest find of all, and the disclosure by
the Arabs of the great caves of the Wadi Murabba'at.
Accounts of the discovery and procurement of the various scrolls are
complicated and conflicting.
In Cave IV alone thousands of fragments of more than 382 manuscripts were
found. In all more than 500 manuscripts have come from Qumran in tens of
thousands of leather fragments.
The first four scrolls were acquired by the Syrian Orthodox Metropolitan
of Jerusalem (the story is very obscure), who took them to America and later
sold them to the Hebrew University for a reputed quarter of a million dollars.
Professor Sukenic, of the Hebrew University, picked up some fragments in a
Jerusalem antique shop.
The Jordanian government has legal right to the finds and, being short of
funds, has sold them at a fixed rate of one pound ($2.80) per square
centimeter. Before the owners can claim them, the fragments must go to the
Palestine Archaeological Museum to be cleaned, photographed, and edited for
publication.
Dead Sea manuscripts have been acquired by McGill, Manchester, and
Heidelberg Universities; by the McCormick Theological Seminary; and by the
Vatican Library. New finds are acquired from the Arabs through the agency of
intermediate dealers; the channels are devious and often shady.
It ranges from the seventh century B.C. (one fragment), to A.D. 68. Texts
of Samuel, Jeremiah, and Exodus may date from about 200 B.C.; but most of the
biblical scrolls come from the first century B.C.
A quarter of all the manuscripts are biblical, every book of the Old
Testament except Esther being represented. The most numerous manuscripts are
of Deuteronomy, Isaiah and the Psalms. The first discovery was a Hebrew text
of Isaiah, a thousand years older than any previously known. The Apocryphal
works are richly represented, including two books in cryptographic writing, a
book of Enoch, and a treatise on the book of Moses. The most famous
nonbiblical scrolls are the Manual of Discipline, the Habakkuk Commentary, the
Thanksgiving Psalms, the ancient ritual Order of Battle, the Genesis
Apocryphon (a fuller story of Genesis, including a new account of Abraham in
Egypt), a "Description of the New Jerusalem," and a lost Commentary on Job.
The investigation and publication of such writings has just begun.
A society of pious "apocalyptic" Jews, now generally identified with the
Essenes.
That is largely a matter of interpretation, but by now scholars are
generally agreed that the scrolls teach us for the first time: (1) the
background of John the Baptist; (2) the exact date of Easter; (3) the nature
and origin of the organization of the Primitive Church; (4) the significance
of the strange language and teachings of John; (5) the origin of Gnosticism;
(6) the nature of the Church as a continuation of an ancient apocalyptic and
Messianic tradition ignored by Rabbinic Judaism; (7) the nature of the strange
terminology of the New Testament as continuing an ancient tradition; (8) of
the Christian community as following the pattern of earlier apocalyptic
communities in the desert; and (9) the ancient Hebrew-apocalyptic background
of the writings of Paul.
This, too, is a matter of interpretation. But if there is any validity to
the thousands of studies appearing on parallels between the scrolls and
various biblical and historical writings, the perfectly staggering parallels
between the Book of Mormon and the scrolls cannot be brushed aside nor
explained away.
1954) that the peculiar manner of burying the scrolls indicated that they had
been laid away for the purpose of coming forth in a future dispensation. Since
then a number of scholars (such as Malik and Danielou) have confirmed this
impression. The tradition of the sacred buried record meets us full-blown in
the similar preservation of the scrolls and the Book of Mormon.
because of his Messianic preaching, and seeking refuge in the desert, where he
intended to found a community. The community of Qumran was led into the desert
by such a man centuries later, and there is considerable evidence that this
was an established and traditional routine of great antiquity.
offering animal sacrifice and observing the Law of Moses under the direction
of legitimate priests and yet at the same time observing ordinances of a
strangely Christian nature. It is a situation "difficult to visualize"
(Cross), and yet its counterpart is found in the Book of Mormon.
and laxity in observing the Law. They respect the temple and its traditions
but despise the leaders of the Jews who have driven them from Jerusalem. This
is exactly the attitude of Nephi.
the Messiah and the New Covenant. Their sacrament is "a liturgical
anticipation of the Messianic banquet" (Cross), as are their baptisms and
their white garments, all belong to "a church of anticipation." This parallels
the Book of Mormon situation exactly.
in choosing a site where they can establish a large and elaborate system of
tanks and basins for washings and baptisms. One thinks immediately of Alma's
community in the wilderness at the Waters of Mormon.
of twelve laymen headed by three priests. Scholars have agreed that we have
here a definite tie-in with the organization of the Early Church. Its closest
parallel is in Christ's organization of the Church in 3 Nephi.
scrolls is the existence of a great prophetic tradition that has been
completely forgotten. Its greatest representative is the mysterious "Teacher
of Righteousness" or "Righteous Teacher," a major prophet whose very existence
was unknown until 1950. How could a figure of such immense importance both to
Christians and Jews have been completely forgotten? It was because his name
was blotted out by Rabbinical or "official" Jews, who persecuted him severely
and drove him into the desert because he preached the coming of the Messiah.
He was of priestly descent, being of the line of Zadok, another
mysterious prophet, whom some believed lived at the time of Moses and who is
the type of the true priest who looked forward to the Messiah. Allegro
believes that the Teacher of Righteousness himself may have been called Zadok.
The important thing is the discovery not of controversial individuals but of
an undeniable tradition of a line of persecuted Messianic prophets. This is in
perfect agreement with the Zenock and Zenos tradition in the Book of Mormon.
Since one of the commonest phenomena in the apocryphal literature, including
the scrolls, is the frequent duplication and corruption of proper names, it
might not be too much to suggest that Zadok might even be a corruption of
Zenock, since of course in Hebrew the vowels are not written, and the Hebrew
"d" resembles the "n" closely enough (in the archaic script) to have been
confused by an early copyist-very common type of mistake. Be that as it may,
the peculiar type of prophet represented by Zenock and Zenos is now fully
established by the scrolls.
(1) the theological language of the New Testament and Christian apocrypha, (2)
their eschatological doctrines, and (3) their organizational and liturgical
institutions. (Cross.) All three receive their fullest exposition in 3 Nephi,
where the Messiah himself comes and organizes his church on the foundations
already laid for it.
The strongest accusation against the Book of Mormon in the past has
always been the presence in it of New Testament language, doctrines, and
ordinances among people living in pre-Christian times. Today this objection
not only vanishes but now furnishes powerful evidence supporting the Book of
Mormon. The scrolls show a highly developed Messianism, very close to that of
the New Testament. For example, it is now seen that Paul writes in the
authentic Qumran pre-Christian style.
The most read, most available current books on the Dead Sea Scrolls are
the following paperbacks, from which the above information was gleaned.
Allegro, John Marco, The Dead Sea Scrolls (Pelican, 1956).
Cross, Frank M., The Ancient Library of Qumran (Anchor Books, 1961).
Danielou, Jean, The Dead Sea Scrolls and Primitive Christianity (Mentor,
1958).
Davies, A. P., The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Signet, 1956).
Gaster, Theodor H., The Dead Sea Scriptures in English (Doubleday Anchor,
1957).
Schonfield, Hugh J., Secrets of the Dead Sea Scrolls (A. S. Barnes,
1957).
"The Dead Sea Scrolls: Some Questions and Answers" was originally an address
given to the Seminary and Institute faculty at BYU on July 5, 1962. It then
appeared in the Instructor 98 (July 1963): 233-35.
Exactly at noon on the winter solstice of 1964, the writer stood at the
entrance of an artificially extended cave at the place then called Raqim (now
Sahab), a few miles south of Amman, with Rafiq Dajani, brother of the Minister
of Antiquity for Jordan, who had just begun important excavations on the spot
and duly noted that the sun at that moment shone directly on the back wall of
the cave, a feat impossible at any other time of the year. The ancient picture
of a dog painted on the cave wall had dimly suggested to the local inhabitants
and a few scholars in an earlier generation the story of the dog who guarded
the cave of the Seven Sleepers, hundreds of caves claiming that title, but
nobody took it very seriously. Beneath Byzantine stones, older ruins were
coming to light, suggesting that the place may have been another Qumran, the
settlement of early Christian or even Jewish sectaries of the desert; the
region around was still all open country, mostly bare rocky ground. There it
was, the beginning of an excavation that might turn up something exciting.
Professor Dajani had read the article below in manuscript form and obligingly
taken me for a visit to the place, where I took some pictures which were
published in the Improvement Era.
Compare those pictures with what you find there today! Twelve years later
I returned to the spot with a tour group in excited anticipation of the
wonders I would now see laid bare. What we found was that the excavations, far
from being completed, had actually been covered up, all but the cave; on the
spot was rising the concrete shell of a huge new mosque, and a large marble
slab, before the cave, proclaimed in Arabic and English that this was the Cave
of the Seven Sleepers. The spot was being converted into a major Moslem
shrine; our Christian Armenian guide was worried sick that there would be an
incident, and at first hotly refused to stop the bus anywhere near the place.
Naturally, I went straight for the cave and was met at the entrance by a
venerable Mollah and his assistant, who were selling candles; I said I wanted
to see the holy dog and they led me to the back of the cave where the wall was
completely covered by a large old commode, through whose dirty glass windows
they pointed out some ancient brown bones and their prize, the actual jawbone
of the holy dog; a relic had usurped the place of the picture. So there it
was: what had been a few scattered ruins, lying deserted and completely
ignored on the heath, was now being promoted as a booming cult-center, rapidly
foundering in the encroaching clutter of suburban real estate enterprises. To
a student of John Chrysostom nothing could be more instructive; it had taken
just twelve years to set up an ancient and hopefully profitable center of
pilgrimage. So you see, all sorts of things go on in the haunted desert, as
the following article will show.
While Jewish and Christian writings have been diligently searched for
possible references, direct or indirect, to the Qumran tradition, the Moslem
commentators on the Koran have been neglected as a source of information, and
that for the very quality that renders their work most valuable, namely their
"uncritical" reluctance to omit from their profuse and repetitive notes any
tradition, anecdote, or rumor that might conceivably cast light on a subject.
Packed in among their jumbled baggage are many items that bring Qumran to
mind. Whether these are significant or not remains to be decided after some of
them have been examined.
The most promising place to begin a search for possible glimpses of
Qumran is among the commentaries on the "Sura of the Cave" (Sura XVIII) and
the most promising guidebook is that inexhaustible storehouse of oddities and
surprises, Ahmad ath-Tha'labi's Accounts of the Prophets. Following
Tha'labi's lead, and eking out his reports with those of other commentators,
we shall attempt to show that Moslem scholars were convinced that there had
once been a singular community of saints living in caves in the Judaean
desert, particularly in the region of Jericho, and that those cave people had
a portentous message for the human race.
As the most fitting commentary to the thesis that all things of this
earth are but "dust and dry dirt," the Prophet refers us to the Ashab al-Kahf
wa-l `Raqim, "The Companions (often rendered simply `People' or `Inhabitants')
of the Cave and the Inscription." (Sura XVIII, 9-10.) This was a group of holy
men who had sought retreat in the wilderness in flight from a wicked and
godless community and in the expectation that God would guide them in a proper
way of life, fill them with grace, and provide for their wants; in due time
they were hidden from the knowledge of men, and their bodies were miraculously
preserved in a cave, where they were at length discovered when a youth, by the
providence of God, circulated old coins in a nearby town and thereby brought a
rush of treasure-seekers to the scene. (Sura XVIII, 10-22.) Such a tradition
might well look back to the sectaries of the desert-but there is a catch, for
most commentators are agreed that the People of the Cave were the Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus. That would settle the matter were it not that the Ephesus
tradition itself rests on the flimsiest of foundations, archaeologically and
philologically. It is "une de ces légendes vagabondes qui n'ont pas d'attache
fixé et prennent pied sur les terrains les plus divers, sans qu'aucun fait
connu semble justifier le choix." Scholars ancient and modern who have tried
to get to the historical kernel of the story have found themselves confronted
by countless conflicting traditions, and the Koran and its commentators note
that every essential element of the history of the Companions is a subject of
hopeless controversy among the People of the Book, who cannot agree as to
where the cave was, how many people were in it, what their religion was, how
long they stayed there, or in what condition. In short, nobody really knows
their history.
The main source of the confusion is not far to seek: there was more than
one cave story because there was more than one cave, as the extremely popular
legend spread abroad in the world, the tale had to be adjusted to the interest
of local patriotism, which from Andalusia to Persia enthusiastically and
profitably exploited local grottoes as the authentic and original sites of the
Seven Sleepers or the Companions of the Cave. But amid a welter of
conflicting legends and claims, two main traditions have always been
recognized, an Occidental, containing clearly marked pre-Christian Classical
elements as its distinctive ingredient, and an Eastern or Arabic tradition,
based principally on Jewish apocryphal lore. The clearest distinction between
the two versions is preserved by Tha'labi. He knows the Ephesus tradition as
well as anybody: the pre-Christian legends of youthful sleeping heroes are
well represented in his pages; he knows the resurrection miracle-stories of
the early Christian apocrypha; he and the other Arabs give an accurate
description of the state of the Church both when the Sleepers fell asleep and
when they awoke; and they know the name of the mountain near Ephesus where
they slept, a name that Christian scholars apparently do not know.
But knowing the Ephesus version as he does, Tha'labi still gives priority
to an entirely different story about a party of three refugees who were
looking for a place for their families to settle when "the sky smote them";
they took refuge in a cave, only to be trapped by a rock-slide that sealed the
entrance. Being thus caught, each one of them recounted some pious deed he had
done in this lifetime, and with each successive story a fissure in the wall
opened wider until they could all escape. This tale has nothing to do with
Ephesus, the men in the cave tell Jewish stories and do not even fall asleep.
The violence of the elements, the sliding down of the mountain, and the
opening of fissures in the earth suggest an earthquake, and the sequel is that
the people settled on the spot, since they left their records there.
The story of the Three is an Arabic contribution, designated by Huber as
the "Raqim" version, that being the uniquely Arabic name for the locale of the
Cave. Since it is a perfectly plausible tale, one wonders why the Arabs, who
insist on placing al-Raqim in Syria or Palestine, bother with Ephesus at all.
It is because Ephesus had loudly advertised its claim to the Seven Sleepers
ever since the middle of the Fifth Century, and our commentators are not the
men to leave anything out. Ephesus, however, gets into the picture only by
usurping the much older credentials of Antioch, a circumstance that has been
overlooked by researchers. The hero of the Arabic accounts of the Sleepers is
one Tamlikh, whose name does not appear in the standard Western lists of the
Seven: When he turns up in the Syriac versions his name makes an eighth in the
established list, so that the older Syriac and Arabic accounts uniformly
insist that there were really eight Sleepers. The origin of the intruder is
indicated by the epithet that Tha'labi gives him of Ibn Falastin-the
Palestinian. His Greek name of Iamblichus usually appears in Latin sources as
Malchus, while the Arabic writers point it variously as Tamlikh, Yamlikh, and
Namlikh: all that remains is Bamlikh to remind us that, as Huber long ago
suggested, the name Iamblichus-Malchus is simply Abimelech. What brought
Huber to that observation was the long-established identity, or at least very
close parallel, between the Seven Sleepers and Abimelech, the friend of
Jeremiah who slept for seventy or one hundred years. Abimelech in turn has
long been identified with Onias-Honi the Circle-drawer. Onias, Abimelech, and
Jeremiah all fell into century-long slumbers as they sat in the shade of a
tree, and the tree is a peculiar detail that the Arabic writers introduce into
their version of the Seven Sleepers, and just as Onias was driven with his
workmen to seek shelter from a storm in a cave, so the Arabs say the Cave of
the Companions was discovered by a shepherd escaping from a storm, who ordered
two laborers to open the mouth of the cave for him. This Onias has in our day
often been put forth as the leader of the Zadokite forerunners of the Qumran
community in the days when they were being persecuted by Antiochus Epiphanes,
and even as the founder of Qumran. So we have Tamlikh, the leader of the
Companions of the Cave, identified through Abimelech, with Onias, the leader
of the Qumran society.
The earliest mention of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus is in the Itinera
Theodosi, 530 Anno Domini, which states that the Seven were brothers and that
their mother was Felicitas. When one recalls that one of the first female
martyrs was St. Felicitas, who heroically endured the extinction of her seven
sons, and that these seven have been identified in ancient and modern times
with the seven young Jewish heroes of IV Maccabees, martyred at Antioch by the
brother of Antiochus Epiphanes, and that Byzantine Christians also identify
the Seven Sleepers with the martyrs of Antioch, and when one further
considers that Decius, the villain of the Ephesus story, goes by the name of
Antiochus in an eastern version of it, one begins to wonder if the
Fifth-Century Ephesus story might not reflect a much earlier Syrian version.
The confusion of Antioch and Ephesus is apparent in the strange insistence of
our Arabic informants that the city of Ephesus changed its name to Tarsus
after its conversion from paganism. Scholars have found no explanation for
this strange aberration, and indeed it is hard to see how well-traveled men
could have confused two of the best-known cities in the world. But there is
evidence that the name of Tarsus was indeed changed to Antiochia in 171 before
Christ in honor of the pagan Antiochus Epiphanes, in which case it was back to
Tarsus after his demise. Zonaras, in a rhetorical play on words, calls the
city Epiphanes, and one wonders if the confusion of Tarsus-Epiphanes with
Ephesus might not be a typical slip: the Arabs knew that the city had once had
another name-and what could it have been but Ephesus, since they favored
Tarsus as the site of the cave? The year that the name was changed, 171 B.C.,
also saw a migration of Jews to Tarsus, and one Arabic commentator suggests
that Tarsus got its name at the time of the Cave People from a group of
colonists from Tripolis in Syria . At about the same time, it is surmised,
the Bene Zadok were first being driven by Antiochus Epiphanes under their
leader Onias III. Thus there is some evidence to associate the founding of
the Cave community with persons, times, places, and circumstances that have
become familiar in the discussions of the founding of the Qumran community.
While quite aware that the Seven Sleepers story is Christian property,
our Arabic informants are inclined to favor a pre-Christian date for the
Companions of the Cave, explaining that they later become disciples of Jesus
and flourished "in the days of the kings of Tawaif, between Jesus and
Mohammed." This implies that the society had a fairly long life, a thing
entirely out of keeping with the brief and violent episode of the Ephesians.
Another thing to note is the dependence of our Arabic informants, especially
Tha'labi, on Jewish sources. While it was Jacobite and Nestorian leaders
arguing about the People of the Cave who first asked Mohammed's opinion on the
matter, those who really claimed a monopoly of knowledge on the subject were
the Jews. According to one account, the Quraish sent a delegation to Medina to
gather intellectual ammunition against the Prophet from the local Jews, who
loudly insisted that they alone were qualified to speak on prophetic matters.
They suggested some test questions to embarrass the new prophet, the prize one
being about the People of the Cave . In another version it is the skeptical
Jews themselves who send the delegation to investigate Mohammed. But the
account favored by Tha'labi is that of a delegation of three holy men who came
not to Mohammed but to Omar, looking for a true prophet. These were not the
smart, proud, skeptical Jews of Medina but sincere and humble seekers, who
gladly accepted the Prophet as soon as they were made sure of his calling.
The impression one gets is that of Hasidic Jews interviewing the sympathetic
Omar during his campaign in Palestine, he calls them "brothers," and he must
send back home for Ali in order to answer their questions. The peculiar
questions they put to him moreover bear the characteristic stamp of the
nonconformist sectaries: they ask about the keys of heaven, the moving tomb of
Jonah, the warning minister who is neither spirit nor man, the things that
walk the earth but were not created in the womb, the speech of animals and its
spiritual message, and above all "about the people of a former age who died
309 years, and then God revived them, what is their story?"
That the story of the devout delegates goes back to the early sectaries
is indicated in a report attributed to Ibn Abbas, the nephew of the Prophet
and the star witness in all matters concerning the People of the Cave: "The
followers of Jesus remained on the sacred path for 80 years after his
ascension," and then "Yunus the Jew came among the Christians wearing a
hermit's or monk's gown [this well before the days of Christian monasticism].
. . . His devout life produced great confidence among the Christians, and . .
. he said, `Send me three of your learned men. . . that I may divine a secret
before each of them separately.'" As a result "the Christians were divided
into three sects" forever after-the very sects that argued about the Cave
People in the presence of Mohammed. Here we have a counterpart both to the
three malicious questions that the Jews put to Mohammed (in nearly all the
commentators the questions are three) and the delegation of three pious Jews
that came to him. The oldest Syrian version of the Seven Sleepers, which some
hold to be the original, places their history around A.D. 60, thus taking it
entirely out of the later Ephesian setting and putting it in the orbit of the
early sectaries.
Tha'labi is quite at home with certain pre-Christian communities in the
desert. He tells us among other things how the infant Mary was taken to be
reared by "the priests of the sons of Aaron," and how the priestly society
cast lots for her, standing on the banks of the Jordan to see whose rod would
sink and whose would float, they being "the reeds with which they used to
write the Torah." Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, and, according to
Tha'labi, "the chief of the scholars and their prophet," won the lottery; but
when a famine came he could no longer support the child, and it was necessary
to have another casting of lots, won this time by Joseph the righteous
carpenter. Since "Brownlee argues that the mother of the Messiah is the
`Essene Community,"' Mary's prominence in such a community as this may not be
without significance. The story of Joseph's winning of Mary is told in the
Epistle of I Clement, c. 43, and indeed Tha'labi's general familiarity with
Clementine motifs should be studied in view of the importance of the latter in
understanding the background of Qumran. His tracing of Zacharias's genealogy
through both a Saduq and a Sadiq indicates access to early source material
and is quite relevant to the Seven Sleeper investigation, since the oldest
Western version, that of Gregory of Tours, reports, on the authority of "a
certain Syrian" that the mission of the Seven Sleepers was to correct certain
errors not of the Christians but of the Sadducees, a term often confused with
Zadokite in the early Middle Ages in designating nonconformist sectarians
among the Jews. Why should the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus be emissaries to the
Sadducees, of all things? The Zadokite background of Qumran needs no
demonstration.
A significant aspect of the Seven Sleepers' history as told by the Arabs
is that nobody ever sees them alive. Even in the Western legends the ruler
merely embraces the youths as they sit on the ground, and after a short and
formal benediction by one of them they promptly fall asleep again. The
miracle that proves the resurrection is never the animation of their bodies
but only their preservation; no capital is made of the rich store of Jewish
and Christian apocryphal lore, the "testaments" of various prophets,
patriarchs, and apostles who come to life to tell of wonderful things in the
worlds beyond. This remarkable reserve suggests what many students have
pointed out, that the Sleeper stories may well have originated with the actual
discovery of human remains in caves. The Mediterranean world had never been
without local hero-cults and their grottoes: Arabic writers report visits to a
center in Andalusia that had all the fixtures and purported to be the original
home of the Companions of the Cave, and such a shrine and cult survived at
Paphos on Cyprus down to modern times. But the cave best known to the Arabs
was one near Tarsus, where thirteen cadavers in a remarkable state of
preservation were annually propped up and groomed, their clothes brushed,
their nails manicured, their hair dressed, and then laid down to sleep for
another year before a devout host of Christian pilgrims who believed they were
in the presence of the Seven Sleepers. This reproduces exactly the drama of
the original Sleepers in the presence of Theodosius and his people, and
strongly suggests a cult of the dead. In the "Hunting" version of the Sleepers
story, which has all the marks of the Classical Endymion cycle, our Arabic
informants comment on how the spring dried up and the trees all withered while
the youths slept, only to be miraculously revived at their awakening. Such
obvious cult-motifs serve to set the Ephesian tradition apart from the more
down-to-earth "Raqim" accounts of the Arabs, which indeed contain rather
surprisingly nothing of a miraculous nature.
In a much-cited passage, Ibn Abbas tells how on a campaign with Mu'awiyah
or Habib ibn Maslamah he passed by a cave containing bones that were said to
be those of the Companions. His friend wanted to take a look, but Ibn Abbas
protested that that would be sacrilege; some men who were sent to the cave to
investigate were driven away in terror by a fierce wind. Ibn Abbas is quoted
as saying that the cave was "near Aelia," and al-Qurtubi explains that they
passed by it on the way to Rum. The latter authority also reports that when
Ibn Abbas made a few fitting remarks at the cave site, a Syrian monk who was
standing by observed with surprise, "I didn't think that an Arab would know
anything about that!" to which the company proudly replied by introducing Ibn
Abbas as their Prophet's nephew.
The key to the location of the Eastern Cave is the mysterious name of
al-Raqim. The great Ibn Abbas confesses that the word is one of the four
things in the Koran that he cannot understand, but is quoted by Tabari as
saying that Raqim is "a wadi between Asfan and Aelia beyond Palestine; and it
is near Aelia"; while Damiri has him say: "it is a wadi between Amman and
Aelia, beyond Palestine between the Ghatfan (tribe) and the country beyond
Palestine; and this is the wadi in which the People of the Cave live, but
Ka'ab says it is their village." Most Arabic authorities locate al-Raqim in
the plain of Balq in southeastern Palestine, and the geographer Istakhri
mentions a small town by that name in the area, apparently near the Dead Sea.
Some writers, however, favor the region of Damascus and others that of Amman.
Clermont-Ganneau noted that the village of al-Raqim seven kilometers south of
Amman is identified by Usama with a place called el-Kahf, where there are some
remarkable tombs cut into the living rock-hence Ashab al-Kahf wa l'Raqim. In
December of 1964 the writer visited this site with Mr. Rafiq Dajani of the
Jordan Department of Antiquities, whose forthcoming book on the subject treats
at length the features of the newly excavated site which render it in our
opinion by far the most likely candidate for the original Raqim. Even Huber
concedes that this was probably the al-Raqim of the Arabic commentators but
hastens to point out that it cannot possibly have been the cave of the Seven
Sleepers of Ephesus. But then no one says it was, our Arabic authors readily
admit that they are dealing with other caves, and what interests us here is
not the mythical cavern of Ephesus but real caves in the Judaean desert.
Distant candidates in Nineveh and Yemen need not detain us, though we
should not overlook the suggestion that the Companions were originally
wandering artisans (sayaqala) Tha'labi reports that when writings inscribed
on metal plates (and we shall presently see that the "inscriptions" of the
Cave were such documents) were found in a cave in Yemen no one could decipher
them until one of these traveling smiths or artisans was consulted. This is
noteworthy because some scholars have seen in these nomadic craftsmen the
descendants of the Rekhabites and hence the possible ancestors of the Qumran
community. The earliest Oriental versions of the Seven Sleepers stories
actually do come from Nejran, the borders of Yemen. Massignon explains this by
showing that the feast of the Martyrs of Nejran falls on the same day as that
of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, making it easy if not inevitable for Jacob
of Sarug to confuse the two; and since Ephesus was inconveniently far away,
Massignon reasons, Eastern Christians simply moved the shrine to Nejran,
whence it was transplanted to "military garrisons and the hermitages of
anchorites on the fringes of the deserts." The objection to this theory is
that the men of Nejran will have nothing whatever to do with Seven Sleepers,
but only three or five, which is strange indeed if they imported the magic
Seven directly from Ephesus. Plainly the Nejran version rests on another
tradition.
Al-Raqim, so Lane informs us, means writings engraved or scratched on
something, "a brass plate, or stone tablet, placed at the mouth of the cave,"
Sale suggests, though he is not sure, or else it is two lead tablets in a
sealed copper box, with silver seals, or it is simply a book, or even a
golden tablet, or perhaps it is an inscription over the cave door, or else
the name of the cave itself, or of the wadi where it is, or possibly the
mountain, or it may have been the stone that blocked the entrance, or else
it is the ruins near the cave or even the village where the Cave People
lived; or it may refer to water holes or running water in the wadi. On the
other hand, it may refer to coins, or to an inkstand or writing desk found on
the spot; or it may be the dog that guarded the cave, or any number of
regions claiming to possess the Cave. Strangely enough, no one seeking to
locate the cave ever mentions the church or mosque that is supposed to have
marked the spot with perpetual ritual observances, this most obvious clue of
all has no place in the Raqim tradition. Instead we are confronted with a
combination of caves, writings, bones, ruins, coins, inkstands, wadis (there
is no mention of a valley in any of the orthodox Ephesus stories), and so on,
suggesting that the would-be interpreters of al-Raqim all have in mind a type
of archaeological site that the modern reader most readily associates with
Qumran.
The general consensus is that al-Raqim refers to secret buried writings
containing the history and even the teachings of the Companions but "whose
meaning God has kept from us, and whose history we do not know." These were
deliberately hidden away to come forth in a later age when "perhaps God will
raise up a believing people. " There was a tradition that Jeremiah with the
same purpose had hidden such treasures in a cave near Jericho, as Peter had
done near Jerusalem (according to Baidawi it was Peter who discovered the
documents of al-Raqim), and the theme of buried holy books has a special
appeal to Tha'labi, who carries the custom back to the remotest times. The
recently recognized possibility that the library of Qumran was deliberately
buried in "a solemn communal interment" to come forth in a more righteous age
thus supplies another link between Qumran and the Companions of the Cave and
the Raqim, while putting a new stamp of authenticity on their existence.
Let us recall how the question was put to Omar: "Tell me about the people
of old who died 309 years and then God revived them, what is their story?" One
wonders in passing why Jews should be so interested in a purely Christian
story, and why they alone should claim to know its details, which according to
Tha'labi were all to be found in Jewish books: plainly they were not asking
about Ephesus at all. The length of the famous sleep is reported at anything
from 70 to 900 years. The Christians favor 372, while the Moslems accept the
309 years of the Koran. The true meaning of the 309 is a great mystery, which
only a true prophet can explain; it comes from the beni Israel, and "the
Christians of Nejran say, `As for the 300 years we already knew about that,
but as for the 9 years we know nothing about it."' But all are agreed that it
represents the period of darkness during which the blessed Companions slept,
like Onias, to awaken only at the dawn of a new age of faith. Such was also,
whatever the actual years may have been, the significance of the 390 years of
the Damascus Document I, 5-6, "the Era of Anger" and darkness. Massignon shows
the lengths to which Christians and Moslems will go to see significance in
309; it is the "anagram of the total of the 14 isolated initial letters of the
Koran," namely 903, as also, of the name of Jesus: `Isa = 390. The free
juggling of figures does not draw the line at arranging them in any order,
just as modern scholars are not embarrassed by the difference between 390 and
393 years or the necessity of adding or subtracting 20 or 40 to suit one's
calculations. It has been recognized that the 390 of the Damascus Document is
a symbolic number having "no more than a schematic value," and the same is
held for the Koranic 309. Since both have the same significance and are
equally vague, distant, and mysterious, a possible confusion of the two may
furnish yet another link between the two societies.
The consensus of opinion that al-Raqim were metal plates containing the
writings of the Companions, as well as Tha'labi's preoccupation with metal
documents in general, is moved from the realm of pure fantasy by the recent
discovery of a number of metal documents in Palestine and Syria, the most
notable being the Copper Scrolls from Qumran Cave IV. Tabari tells of a
shepherd who discovered inscribed tablets that no one could read but an old
holy man of the desert-like the Copper Scrolls, these tablets contained lists
of buried treasure. Another peculiarity of the Companions that does not fit
with the Ephesus scene is the emphasis put on the formal organization of the
society. After individually receiving enlightenment in the shade of a
tree-like Onias, Abimelech, and the Buddha, the Seven reveal to each other
their like-mindedness and resolve to form a community with a nearby cave as
their headquarters. They have a president and spokesman, Maximilianus, and a
secretary and a treasurer, Tamlikh, the star of the play. Each member fetches
his property from his father's house and, after giving lavishly to the poor,
turns the rest over to a common fund, to be shrewdly administered. Such a
community of property is one of the best-known features of the Qumran society.
In taking to the wilderness, the Brethren set up (according to the Arabs,
but not to the Greeks) at a place where there were a good spring and some
fruit trees, subsisting as did many a pious anchorite in years to come on the
water and dates of an oasis . "They left their homes and lands, families and
children . . . and entered the caves [plural] in the year of the prophets."
Here we have a definitive religious movement, as against the adolescent
escapade of Ephesus: in the latter case the youths (who are very young) flee
to the wilderness expressly to escape the emperor, while in the former their
society flourishes before the emperor ever hears of it. Part of the heroic
allure of the Companions is that they are high-ranking officers in the
imperial army, which seeming inconsistency suits well with the image of the
men of Qumran as "dedicated holy warriors."
Considerable emphasis is placed by our Arabic authors on the north-south
orientation of the Sleepers, who must face the north to preserve their bodies
against the day of their arising. Here is a reminder of the north-south
orientation of the burials at Qumran, whatever may be its significance. The
bodies of the Sleepers were turned from side to side by angelic ministers (to
avoid corruption) every seven days, or seven years, or twice a year, or (in
most writers) every year on New Year's Day. Also, the sun shines into the
cavern on just two days of the year, suggesting the equinoxes, and it is the
sun that finally awakens them. The emphasis here on a solar (resurrection)
cult and calendar is a reminder that the Qumran people were peculiar for their
zealous adherence to an archaic solar calendar.
It was in the ancient practice of incubation at healing shrines that E.
Rohde sought the origin of the Seven Sleepers tradition, and indeed our Arabic
and Syriac sources tell how God speaks to the Companions as they sleep, and
how one calls upon their names for healing dreams. It is just possible that
Qumran itself may have been such a healing shrine: "The idea of a place of
healing by the Dead Sea was well established in Jewish tradition and gives
added reason for the Essenes' (`Physicians') choice of Qumran (Mesillah) for
their desert home." In this connection, Allegro dwells on the ancient
designations of Qumran as meaning "shady," "sheltered", which puts one in mind
of the elaborate arrangements described by the Arab scholars for keeping the
sleeping Companions in the shade, though admittedly far-fetched.
The one truly moving episode in the history of the Seven Sleepers as the
Arabic commentators tell it is the manner of their falling asleep. The
indefatigable Tamlikh returns from the town in tears of anxiety to report to
his friends that the monster (iabbar, a Jewish word) has returned to Ephesus
and is coming out against them. This calls for a general lamentation until
Tamlikh tells the brethren to dry their eyes, lift up their heads, and "eat
what God has given," an expression suggestive of an exhortation to martyrdom.
Accordingly, we behold the Brethren of the Cave partaking of their last
sorrowful supper as the sun sets (the setting of the sun receives special
emphasis), and then, as they sit upon the ground, preparing and exhorting one
another in holy conversation, quietly yielding up their souls to God.
The celebration of a last supper and love-feast as the sun sets brings to
mind Philo's account of an Egyptian branch of the Essenes holding their solemn
feast at sundown, as well as al-Biruni's report that the Jewish sect of the
Maghariba celebrated their rites at sunset, a circumstance that could easily
lead him to omit the single nuqfah that makes the difference between Maghariba
("Sundown-people") and the familiar Maghariyah or "People of the Caves."
The reference in Sura LXXXV, 4 to "the people of the pit" (ashabu
`l-ukhdud) deserves mention because in the past it has commonly been
interpreted as referring to the persecutors of the Christians of Nejran. This
explanation was seriously questioned, and the now familiar designation of the
"people of the pit" in the Dead Sea Scrolls indicates an earlier origin of the
concept. At the same time it vindicates the Christian Nejran tradition as an
authentic echo of the old desert sectaries: it was the Christians of Nejran,
it will be recalled, who first mentioned the Companions of the Cave to
Mohammed.
The name given by the Companions to their settlement, according to the
Arabic sources, was Hiram or Khiram, meaning "sectarians" or "separation," but
also an appropriate designation for forbidden ground. The wonderful dog that
spoke with a human voice and faithfully guarded the threshold of the Cave
usually goes by the name of Qatmir, though we also find him sharing the
well-nigh universal name of Raqim, explained by Damiri's note that the Arabs
often called a dog Raqmah, meaning a wadi with water in it, which he believes
to be the source of the name Raqim. Since the name of the dog is thus
confused with that of the society, the cave, the valley and what-not, one
wonders if the second commonest name of the dog might not represent a like
confusion, for the name is Khumran, the closest parallel yet to "the
meaningless Arabic name Qumran."
Let us now briefly summarize some of the main points of resemblance
between Qumran and the Companions of the Cave. First of all, the experts favor
a pre-Christian origin for both; each begins its history with a persecution
and migration under (possibly) Antiochus Epiphanes, at a time when both
societies seem to have the same leader; both have ties with wandering
artisans, the ancestors and/or descendants of desert sectarian groups; they
have the same apocalyptic-mystic teachings, familiar alike from the early
Jewish and the early Christian apocryphal writings; both have connections with
a priestly society on the Jordan before the birth of Christ; the activities of
both are reflected in the Clementine writings; both are identified with the
Zadokites by name; both are near Aelia and even nearer to Jericho; both leave
behind the same peculiar combination of archaeological litter; both engage in
the odd practice of burying sacred records to come forth at a later time as a
witness; both make use of metal plates for such records; each thinks of itself
as the righteous remnant; the numbers 309 and 390 have for the Companions and
Qumran respectively the same significance; both societies are well organized
and practice a community of property; each community has its buildings,
spring, and fruit trees as well as its caves; both are ritually oriented,
dedicated to good works and religious exercises, controlled by a special solar
calendar; in both the dead are laid away facing the north; both practice
healing and incubation and seem to have had a solemn ritual feast at sundown;
the members of both are dramatized in a military capacity; both sites are
linked in later times with the mysterious word Khumran-Qumran. In both cases
everything is very vague, far away, and strangely portentous.
The great mystic and symbolic appeal of the Sura of the Cave, which is
recited every Friday in every mosque, rests on the concept of the Seven as
intercessors for man in a wicked and dangerous world. But there may be more
than abstract symbolism or allegory involved here. Scattered references in
Jewish and Christian writings, such as the Karaite texts and the letter of
Bishop Timotheus, indicate at least a dim awareness down through the centuries
of the existence and the peculiar significance of writings found in caves near
Jericho. When the red herring of Ephesus is removed we are faced with the very
real likelihood that the people who left those records were those very
"Companions of the Cave and the Writing" who made such an indelible imprint on
the Islam.
The purpose of this brief exploratory study has been to raise rather than
settle issues. The Arabic commentators cited are, of course, only a sampling,
since the Arabic sources available at present in the Far West are limited,
though increasing very rapidly, thanks to the titanic efforts of Professor
Aziz S. Atiya. But they have given us enough to indicate that many questions
still await and deserve investigation. We have not even touched upon the
knotty and intriguing question of the identification and status of the
all-knowing Tha'labi, nor have we examined the possible paths by which the
Qumran tradition reached him and other Arabic writers; nor have we considered
the wealth of literary tradition and folklore that surrounds the wonderful dog
Qatmir, nor sought to trace the mysterious and significant line of Zadok in
the Arabic sources; nay, we have not even mentioned the many other possible
references to the Qumran tradition in the Koran itself. What we have done is
simply to indicate the possibility that echoes of Qumran still reverberate in
the pages of many Moslem writers, who may yet prove valuable informants to
students of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
1. "Abu lshaq Ibn Mohammed Ibn Ibrahim ath-Tha'labi of Nishapur, the
celebrated commentator, was the outstanding [Koran] interpreter of his time;
he composed a great commentary which was without equal for fullness." (Ibn
Khallikan, Kitab wafayat al-aiyan [Paris: 1842], I, p. 30. "Ein besonders
heiss umstrittenes Feld waren altarabischen, judischen und christlichen
Legenden des Korans und der Tradition. . . . So kommt es, dass der
bedeutendste Korangelehrte deiner Zeit, der im Jahre 427/1036 gestorbene Ahmed
eth-Tha'labi, als bedeutendstes Werk seine `Prophetengeschichten' erfasst
hat." (A. Mez., Die Renaissance des [slams [Heidelberg: 1922], p. 190.) His
"History of the Prophets" gives all the stories in very great detail.
(Encyclopedia of Islam [1934], IV, p. 736. Cf. C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der
Arabischen Literatur [Weimar: 1898], I, pp. 350-51.)
2. Baronius and Tillemont both declared it spurious. The Austrian
archaeologists working at the supposed site discovered "pas un nom ni un
symbole, indice d'une tombe vénérée." (Analecta Bollandiana 55 [1937]:351.)
Philology is no less nonplussed: "Il ne faut pas oublier que les noms de la
grotte et de la montagne de la légende ne se retrouvent pas aux environs
d'Ephese." (Ibid., 24 [1905]:503.)
3. Analecta Bollandiana 55 (1937):351. Cf. ibid., 39 (1921): 176,
commenting on the "systemes déja échafaudés autour de cette littérature
foisonnante." There is no apparent reason why the legend should have become
the special property of Ephesus, according to Bern Heller ("La Légende des
Sept Dormants," Revue des Etudes Juives 49 [1904]: 216, n. 6), though it is
understandable that the city once in possession should exploit the legend to
the fullest.
4. For location, see below, notes 61-65. The number of sleepers is a
subject of endless debate. (Sura XVIII, 22; al-Nasafi, Tafsir al-Qur'an
al-jalil [Cairo: 1936-1942], II, p. 286; al-Hijazi, al-Tafsiral-wadih [Cairo:
1952], XV, pp. 53-54.) It is one of the great mysteries, known to but a few.
(Al-Tabari, Kitab jami' al-bayan fi tafsir al-Qur'an [Cairo: 1910], XV, p.
150; al-Nasafi.) The Jacobites said there were three sleepers, the Nestorians
five, the Moslems seven. (Al-Qurtubi, al-Jami' liahkam al-Qur'ran [Cairo:
1935?-1950], X, p. 382; al-Damiri, Hayat alhayawan [Cairo: 1867], II, pp.
353-54 (pages are incorrectly numbered, but we follow the numbers given];
al-Nasafi, II, p. 285; al-Baydawi, Anwar al-tanzil [Cairo: 1899-1902], IV, pp.
98-99.) Yusuf Ali, a modern authority, says that Mohammed "suggested that the
youths were seven in number." (The Holy Qur'an [New York: Hafner, 1946], II,
p. 730, note 2337.)
5. Some say they lived before Christ and were idolaters, others that
they were Christians, others that they were Moslems (Tabari, Tarikh al-Tabari
[Cairo: 1961], II, pp. 6-7; Jami' al-bayan, XV, p. 137); some even that their
people were majus (Damiri, II, p. 353). Yet the Jews have a special claim on
them. (Ibn Kathir, Tafsir al-Qur'an alasim [Cairo: 1954], III, p. 74.) See
below, note 37.
6. See below, note 90, for the length of the stay. As to their
condition, the main discussion is whether they were sleeping or dead.
(Baydawi, IV, pp. 97-98; Qurtubi, X, p. 388; Damiri, II, p. 358, etc.) See
Michel Huber, Die Wanderlegende von den Siebenschlâfern [Leipzig: 1910], pp.
79-99.)
7. Huber pp. 17, 122. Thus after favoring Ephesus (though Ephesus is
not mentioned in the Koran), Ibn Kathir, III, p. 75, concludes: "We are not
told what land the cave was in. . . . But Ibn Abbas says it was near Aelia,
and Ibn lshaq says it was near Nineveh, while others say it was in the land of
Rum and others that it was in the plain of Balqa [southeastern Palestine], but
God knows." See below, note 59.
8. Discussed by Huber, pp. 552-56. The distinction is clear in Huber's
classification of sources into the Classical Endymion and Epimenides legends
(pp. 378-90), as against the Onias-Abimelech-Ezra tradition (pp. 403-47) of
the Orient. The Arabic commentators themselves admonish against confusing the
two traditions. Thus Al Shirbini, al-siraj al-munir (Cairo: 1868), II, p. 350,
assures us that the three pious refugees (below, note 13) are "another group
entirely from the [traditional] People of the Cave." (Cf. al-Qurtubi, X, p.
357, and Ibn Kathir, III, p. 75.)
9. The Endymion motif, in which E. Rohde, Die sardinische Sage von den
Neunschlâfern, in Rheinisches Museum fur Philologie, Neue Folge, 35(1880):
158-59,162-63, sees the origin of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, is one of the
four distinct versions of the Sleepers reported by Tha'labi and others. It is
the "Hunting" story in which youthful nobles go forth to hunt and celebrate a
great pagan festival only to end up falling asleep in a cave, guarded by their
faithful dog. The fullest account of this is in Tha'labi, Qisas al-anbiyah
(Cairo: 1921), pp. 289-90,292-93. (Cf. Ibn Kathir, III, pp. 74-75; al-Qasimi,
Tafsiralqasimi [Cairo: 1957-60], X, p. 4032.) Typical of the cycle is
Tha'labi's account of Saint George, pp. 299-300.
10. One of the four versions (see preceding note) is the tale of the
Bath Attendant (Tha'labi, p. 293; Tabari, Tarikh, II, p. 8; Jami' albayan, XV,
p. 136; Damiri, II, pp. 344-45; Qurtubi, X, pp. 359-60), which consists of
familiar motifs from the early apocryphal Acts of John, Thomas, Andrew, Peter,
etc. (See Huber, pp. 306-10.) Also the well-known talking-dog motif, found in
all the above-named Arabic sources, is familiar from the pseudo-Acts of
Andrew, Thomas, etc. Damiri, Il, p. 344, says that the official story of the
People of the Cave was written down by Andrew (Mandrûs) and Thomas (Dûmas),
and others say that it was "a righteous ruler of the people called Peter
(Bidrûs)" who ruled for sixty-eight years who discovered the document.
(Baydawi, IV, pp. 87,90.)
11. The moral decline of the Christians just before the Decian
persecution, to which Eusebius and Cyprian attribute that persecution, is
passed over in silence by Christian commentators on the Ephesus story but is
very well described by the Arabs: Tha'labi, p. 293; Tabari, Jami' al-bayan,
XV, p. 133; Nasafi, II, p. 284; Shirbini, II, p. 351; Damiri, II, pp. 339-40.
The state of things under Theodosius is equally well described. (Huber, p.
567; Analecta Bollandiana 72 [1954]: 265.) The risen youths seem to the
emperor like the ancient disciples come to life, and he rejoices in the
restoration of the old religion. (Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 147; Shirbini,
II, p. 362; Damiri, II, p. 349.) The righteous leader who greets the Saints on
their awakening sometimes bears the name of Arius. (Tabari, XV, pp. 145-47;
Shirbini, II, p. 361.) Tha'labi, pp. 297-98, reads it Armus.
12. In Greek sources it is Chaos, Chileton, Chileon; in the Latin,
Chilleus, Celius, Mons Celeus. (Analecta Bollandiana 41 [1923]:374; 55
[1937]:350.) In the Syrian tradition it is always Mount Anchilos, of which
Huber, pp. 222-23, notes that "um Ephesus herum kein einziger Berg einen auch
nur halbwegs ahnlichen Namen tragt," surmising that the Christians could
readily borrow the name of Mons Caelius near Rome for their Sleepers, "da der
Berg selber nicht existierte," p. 58. The Arabs ring the changes on Anchilos
with Yanjilûs (Baydawi, IV, pp. 85-86,89), mispointed to read Banâhîyûs and
even Manhilûs (Damiri, II, pp. 343,350), but most commonly written as Banjilûs
(Tabari, XV, p. 135; Shirbini, II, p. 353; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 73), this being
nearest to the modern Turkish name for the real mountain east of Ephesus,
Panajir-Dagh. (Analecta Bollandiana 55 [1937]:350.)
13. Tha'labi, p. 287, attributing the story to Mohammed. It was thalâtha
nafrin, which can mean either a party of refugees or a military detail. That
it was the former may be inferred from the nature of their mission: yarla-dûna
li-ahlihim, "looking about for some place for their families"-seeking asylum.
(See Damiri, II, p. 341.)
14. The stories have been analyzed by B. Heller, pp. 199-202, and
classified as Haggidic.
15. "So ist eine genaue Scheidung zwischen den Höhlenleuten [of Ephesus]
und den Genossen des Er-Raqim festzuhalten. (Huber, p. 239.) See below, notes
61 and 62.
16. It is now definitely established that the story was first fastened
on Ephesus by a "pia fraus" of Bishop Stephanus of that city in the year 449
or 450, according to Analecta Bollandiana 72 (1954):265, citing E. Honigmann,
Patristic Studies (Rome: Vatican, 1954).
17. M. Huber, pp. 593,503; Analecta Bollandiana 39 (1921):177; 66
(1948): 195. The Arabs explain the discrepancy by having the Seven joined by a
shepherd on their way to the Cave. (Tha'labi, p. 293.) Tabari, Tarikh, II, p.
6; Baydawi, IV, p. 48; and Damiri, II, p. 339, all tell straightforward
stories of eight Sleepers, in spite of Sura XVIII, 22.
18. Tha'labi, p. 292.
19. "Schon der Name Abimelech weist auf den Jamlich-und-Malchus hin."
(Huber, p. 22.)
20. Heller, pp. 207, 214.
21. Huber, pp. 418-26. (See the article Onias [Honi] in Jewish
Encyclopedia [1901], IX, pp. 401-5.)
22. For the three Hebrews, see B. Heller, pp. 202-6. For the tree
episode, see Tha'labi, p. 292; Tabari, XV, p. 136; Baydawi, IV, p. 86; Ibn
Kathir, III, p. 74; Qurtubi, X, p. 359; Shirbini, II, p. 355.
23. Heller, p. 206; Cf. Tha'labi, p. 295; Tabari, Tarikh, II, p. 8;
Baydawi, IV, p. 87; Damiri, II, 357. Down to modern times, the Seven Sleepers
have been protectors against storms. (Analecta Bollandiana 68 [1950]:248.)
24. Whether a later Onias is preferred (R. Goossens, "Onias le juste . .
. lapidé en 65 avant J.-C.," La Nouvelle Clio. 1-2 [1949f], pp. 336-53), or
the earlier Onias III, circa 170 B.C. (M. Black, The Scrolls and Christian
Origins [New York: Scribner's, 1961], p. 20), there is general agreement on a
connection between Onias and Qumran. (See H. H. Rowley, "The Zadokite
Fragments, and the Dead Sea Scrolls," Expository Times 63 [1951/2]:382; M. H.
Segal, "The Habakkuk Commentary and the Damascus Fragments," Journal of
Biblical Literature, 70[1951]:145.)
25. " . . . civitas Epheso ubi sunt septem fratres dormientes . . .
quorum mater Caritina dicitur graece, latine Felicitas," text in Analecta
Bollandiana 41 (1923):372. Cf. Gregory of Tours, in Migne Patrologiae Latinae
71, col. 787: "Septem vero germanorum. .
26. The identification is recognized in Analecta Bollandiana 57
(1939):3. Heller, p. 217, believes that the Seven heroes of Antioch are the
most instructive of all parallels to the Seven of Ephesus.
27. Namely at Paphos on Cyprus. (Analecta Bollandiana 26 [1907]: 272.)
The Christians of Antioch built a basilica over the tomb of the Seven Jewish
brothers, just as those of Ephesus did at the shrine of the Seven Sleepers.
(Heller, p. 217.)
28. In an "Antiochus-Gedicht" of 1527, that ruler is designated
throughout as Decius. (W. Bacher, Jewish Quarterly Review 16(1904]: 529.)
"Voila la fusion des deux légendes," cries Heller, p. 218, commenting on this.
29. Tha'labi, p. 287. Some writers simply speak of Tarsus without even
mentioning Ephesus. (Nasafi, II, p. 282; Shribini, II, p. 358; al Zamakhshari,
al-Kashshaf [Cairo: 1890], I, p. 469.) Heller, p. 200, note 5, can make no
sense of this.
30. Böhlig and Steinmann, in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopâdie, IV A, col.
2419.
31. Ibid., col. 2431.
32. Below, note 56.
33. Realencyklopâdie, IV A, col. 2420-421.
34. Al-Qasimi, X, p. 4028.
35. H. H. Rowley, "The Covenanters of Damascus and the Dead Sea
Scrolls," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 35 (September 1952): 137-45;
P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza (London: 1947), p. 19.
36. See Tha'labi, p. 288; Damiri, II, p. 349; Tabari, Tarikh, II, pp. 6-
7: "Some say they worshipped Jesus. . . and some say their history. . . was
before Christ, and that the Messiah taught his people about them, and that God
woke them from sleep after he had raised up Jesus, in the time between him and
Mohammed, but God knows." (Cf. Qurtubi, X, pp. 359,388, and Huber, p. 21,
citing Ibn Qutaiba.) Damiri, II, p. 357, says they fell asleep, following one
tradition, until the land became Moslem; and Ibn Kathir, III, p. 74, notes
that if they had been Christians, the Jews, who do not mention such a thing,
would certainly have reported it.
37. See B. Heller, "La légende biblique dans l'Islam," Revue des Etudes
Juives 98 (1934):7, and ibid. 49 (1904):202-12. Tha'labi knows of specific
Jewish informants of Mohammed (pp. 77,137), and refers to his own Jewish
teachers (pp. 137,152,241,254,257, etc.). He often betrays a distinctly
pro-Jewish and anti-Christian prejudice, as in the long story of Jesus' vain
attempt to convert a Jew, pp. 276-79. He even knows the Pumbeditha
scandal-story that Mary was once a ladies' hair-dresser. (P. 131.)
38. "The seyyid and the Jacobite and their Christian companions from
Nejran were visiting (kanû `inda) Mohammed" when the matter came up. (Baydawi,
IV, p. 98; Cf. Nasafi, lI, p. 285; Damiri, II, p. 354.)
39. Shirbini, II, p. 351; al-Hijazi, XV, p. 54; as-Suyuti, Lubab alnugul
(Cairo: 1935), p. 144, emphasizes the boastfulness of the Jews.
40. Ibn Kathir, III, p. 74; as-Suyuti (in note 39); Sayyid Qutb, Fi
zilal al-Qur'an (Cairo: 1953?), XV, p. 81.
41. Tha'labi, pp. 288-89. Heller, "Légende des Septs Dormants," p. 200,
believes this story to be a unique contribution of Tha'labi.
42. Ali and Omar in the story both address the delegates as "brothers of
the Arabs," who in turn are "the brothers of the Jews." (Tha'labi, p. 289.)
The way in which Ali is greeted by Omar as he arrives wearing the robe of the
Prophet suggests that he has been summoned from a distance. (P. 288.) As both
the conqueror of Palestine and the would-be rebuilder of the temple (H.
Nibley, in Jewish Quarterly Review 50 [1959]:118-120), Omar would be
sympathetically received by the "Hasidic" sectaries of the desert.
43. The questions are given in full in Tha'labi, pp. 288-89. Most Arab
writers mention only three questions: "about the Spirit, the Companions of the
Cave, and Dhu `l-Qarnain." (Hijazi, XV, p. 54.) On the apocryphal-sectarian
nature of the questions, see M. Huber, pp. 454-56; K. Ahrens, "Christliches im
Qoran," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlândischen Gesellschaft 84(1930): 163.
44. H. Wernecke, The Monist 15 (1905):467-68. They became "the three
chief sects of Syria." (Pp. 466-67.)
45. This is Jacob of Sarug, discussed by Heller, "Légende des Septs
Dormants," pp. 260-61, who is at a loss to explain the surprisingly early
date.
46. Tha'labi, pp. 260-61.
47. M. Black (note 24), p. 149.
48. Tha'labi, pp. 122-23, also tells the Clementine story of the
blossoming staff. On the influence of the Clementine writing on the Koran, see
K. Ahrens (in note 43), pp. 56-60,64,174; on their importance for Qumran, see
H. J. Schoeps, in Zeitschrift fûr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 3
(1951):333-34; 6 (1954):277-78; 10 (1958): 15; and especially "Das
Judenchristentum in den Pseudo-klementinen," 11 (1959):72-77.
49. Tha'labi, p. 259. Onias, as the grandfather of John the Baptist,
belongs to the same line, that of the Sadiqqim. (R. Eisler, lesous Basileus
[Heidelberg: 1930], II, p. 49.)
50. Gregorius Turonensis, in Patrologiae Latinae, 71, col. 788. On the
confusion of Sadduccees and Zadokites, see H. H. Rowley (in note 35) pp.
129-32. The Moslems designated nonconformist sectarians as Zandakiyah, and
though the origin of the word is obscure, a zindiq is, according to Lane's
Arabic-English Lexicon, I, p. 1258, "one of the thanawiyah [or asserters of
the doctrine of Dualism]: or one who asserts his belief in [the two principles
of] Light and Darkness: or one who. . . conceals unbelief and makes an outward
show of belief." How well this applies to the dualistic theology and secretive
policies of Qumran needs no illustration. Our Arabic commentators often refer
to the Companions of the Cave as thanawiyah. When a Moslem victor asked some
sectarians, "Who are you?" they replied, "Harranites." "Christians or Jews?"
"Neither," was the reply. "Have you holy books or a prophet?" To this they
gave a guarded and confusing answer (jamjamû), whereupon the official
observed, "You must be Zandokiyah." So in order to survive they changed their
name to Ssabians. (D. Chwolson, Die Ssabier und der Ssabaismus [St.
Petersburg: 1865], II, p. 15.) Sabaean denotes "irgend eine tauferische
Sekte," according to K. Ahrens (in note 43), p. 154. Could Zandokite and
Zadokite not have been as easily confused as Zadokite and Sadducee?
51. The entire company falls asleep as soon as Tamlikh announces the
approach of visitors; the entrance of the cave then becomes invisible, or else
all who attempt entry are driven out in terror. (Thal'labi, p. 292; Tabari,
Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 143.) Some say the purpose of the shrine is to keep
anyone from entering the cave (Nasafi, II, p. 284; Zamakhshari, I, p. 724);
others that the youths walled themselves in, or were killed in the city and
taken to the cave for burial (Qasimi, X, p. 4051). Only one informant reports
that they "arose and went out to the king and exchanged greetings," and then
returned to the cave and promptly expired; but even he adds that "most of the
scholars say" they died as soon as Tamlikh gave them his message. (Qurtubi, X,
p. 379.)
52. So in the Syrian and Western texts supplied by Huber, pp.
118-27,155-56. The same in Tha'labi, p. 298; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 77; Baydawi,
IV, p. 90; Nasafi, II, p. 284. Tha'labi also tells this story, but quickly
qualifies it by adding that "no man could enter into them," explaining, on the
authority of Ali, that as soon as Tamlikh went in to his friends, God took
their spirits and concealed their hiding place. (P. 298.) The most convincing
of all Tha'labi's accounts is his vivid description of the greedy citizens and
the wild-eyed and bedraggled youth who told them the fantastic story of his
grisly companions in a nearby cave, companions that nobody ever saw alive.
(Pp. 296-97.) Here we have a story that bears the marks of plausibility.
53. "And behold their bodies were completely unchanged, except that
there was not breath (arwah) in them." So the king said, "This is the Sign
which God has sent you." (Tabari, Tarikh, II, pp. 9- 10, and Jami'al-bayan,
XV, p. 147; Damiri, II, pp. 349,357.) Much is made of their eyes being open,
giving them a frighteningly lifelike appearance. (Shirbini, II, p. 356;
Baydawi, IV, p. 95; Nasafi, II, pp. 280-81; as-Sa'di, Taysir al-karim
al-rahman fi tafsir kalam al-mannan [Cairo: 1954-1957], V, p. 10.)
54. Qurtubi, X, p. 358. Huber, pp. 231-33, supplies translations of
descriptions of this shrine by Idrisi, Qurtubi, and Yaqut.
55. Analecta Bollandiana 26 (1907):272.
56. Al-Biruni, Kitab al-athar al-baqiya `an al-qurun il-khaliya
(Leipzig: 1923), p. 290. Many other sources are cited by Huber, pp. 225-26,
228-31. The extra cadavers were readily accounted for as those of devout monks
who had chosen to live and die in the presence of the Seven (ibid., p. 231).
M. J. DeGoeje maintained that the story of the Seven Sleepers originated with
the finding of human remains in a cave near Arabissas in southeastern Asia
Minor, the place being known to the Arabs as Afsus, hence Ephesus. (See "De
Legende der Zevenslapers van Efeze," Verslagen en Mededeelingen der
Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, III (1909), pp. 9-33, of which there
is a lengthy summary in Huber, pp. 233-38.)
57. Tha'labi, pp. 291,293; Huber, pp. 276-77.
58. Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 143; Damiri, II, pp. 338,353;
Shirbini, II, p. 365; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 77.
59. Qurtubi, X, p. 388; Damiri, II, p. 352. Though Ibn Kathir, III, p.
77, says the cave was in the bilad of Rum, he explains, "We are not told in
what land the cave was. . . . But Ibn Abbas says it was near Aelia, and Ibn
Isaac says it was near Nineveh." (Ibid., p. 75.) Ibn Isaac is a notoriously
imaginative informant.
60. Qurtubi, X, p. 388. This may be an embellishment of an older version
in which Ibn Abbas expresses some skepticism as to the possibility of
recognizing bones three hundred years old. (Ibn Kathir, III, p. 77; Huber, p.
233, citing Tabari and Tha'labi.)
61. Qurtubi, X, p. 356; Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 131.
62. Damiri, II, p.342.
63. Al-Qazwini, Al-atharwa `1-bilad (Göttingen: 1848), I, p. 161: other
sources in Huber, pp. 235-38, Al-Istakhri, Al-masalik wa `lmamalik (Cairo:
1961), p. 47.
64. Huber, p. 224, citing Yaqut and Qazwini. About the year 751 there
was great excitement throughout the East in anticipation of an immediate
appearance of the Seven Sleepers in a cemetery of Damascus, according to
Al-Biruni (in note 56), p. 285. (Cf. Analecta Bollandiana 68 [1950]:253. On
Amman, see Huber, p. 237.)
65. Clermont-Ganneau, El-Kahf et la Caverne des sept Dormants, in
Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 4e serie,
XXVII (Paris: 1899), pp. 564-74 Huber, pp. 238-39, accuses Clermont-Ganneau of
following a false scent, yet the latter specifies that he is not seeking the
original cave of the Seven Sleepers but only the favorite Moslem site of it.
(Analecta Bollandiana 19 [1900]:356-57.) L. Massignon accepts his location of
al Raqim. (Analecta Bollandiana 68 [1950]:254.)
66. Damiri, II, p. 340; Qurtubi, X, p. 367.
67. Tha'labi, pp. 102-3. Tabari (cited by Huber, pp. 254-55) tells of a
shepherd who found an inscribed tablet in a cave, which no one could read but
an old holy man of the desert.
68. R. Eisler (in note 49)11, pp. 35, 182-84, 190-93, 197-99. On a
possible Rekhabite background for Qumran, see H. J. Schoeps, Theologie und
Geschichte des Judentums (Tûbingen: 1949), pp. 247-55.
69. Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950):254. It was the leaders of the Nejran
Christians who first questioned Mohammed about the Cave. (Nasafi, II, p. 285,
etc.)
70. Above, note 4.
71. The quotation is from Sale's note to Sura XVIII, 8, though Sale is
not sure of the explanation and leaves the word raqim untranslated. Tabari,
Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 131, says it was stone tablet.
72. Tha'labi, p. 298; Baydawi, IV, p. 83 (lead or stone). The box was
sealed with a silver seal. Al-Bokhari, Jami'al-Sahih (Leyden: 1868), III, p.
276, says there was just one lead plate.
73. Tabari, suggests a book; Qurtubi, X, p. 357, a golden tablet.
74. L. Massignon, in Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950):252, discusses the
significance of this.
75. Hijazi, XV, p. 50; Qurtubi, X, p. 357; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 73 (it is
the wadi); Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 131; Baydawi, IV, p. 83. Al Raqim
designates "the people of the Cave who were confined [or trapped] in it"
(ashâp al-ghâri alladhi intabaqa `alayhim). (Qurtubi.)
76. Ibn Kathir, Tabari, Baydawi.
77. Qurtubi, IV, p. 357, citing al-Saddi.
78. Baydawi, IV, p. 83, and Qurtubi, X, pp. 356-58, suggest both.
79. "It is said that al-Raqim is a wadi beyond Palestine in which is the
Cave; (the name] is taken from Raqmah, a wadi with water-holes in it." And Ibn
Atiya says, "It is in Syria, according to what I heard from many people; it is
a cave with dead people in it." (Qurtubi, X, p. 357.) It means running water
in a wadi. (Damiri, II, p. 341.)
80. Qurtubi, suggests both.
81. Qurtubi; Hijazi, XV, p. 50; Nasafi, II, p. 277.
82. It was the name given to the Andalusian site (above note 54), and to
"a region of Rum" where there was a cave containing "twenty-one souls as if
they were sleeping." (See Qurtubi, who does not believe that this is the
Cave.)
83. Qurtubi. Most commentators (including those mentioned in note 84)
note that the tablets contained the names and history of the Sleepers, and
Qurtubi would even include in the writings "the rule which they embraced from
the religion of Jesus" (al-shar'tamassakûhu bi-hi min dini `Isa).
84. Tha'labi, p. 295; Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 135; Baydawi, IV,
pp. 86-87; Damiri, 11, p. 344, according to whom the book itself is to come
forth as a new revelation.
85. 2 Maccabees 2:4-8. At the time of the First Crusade, local reports
located this cave near Jericho. (Fulcher, Historia Hierosolymitana, edited by
H. Hagenmeyer [Heidelberg: 1913], p. 289.) When the Patriarch Timotheus was
informed, about the year 800, of the discoveries of documents in caves near
Jericho, he assumed that it was those buried by Jeremiah. (J. Hering, in Revue
d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse 41 [1961]:160.)
86. E. A. W. Budge, The Contendings of the Apostles (Oxford: 1935), pp.
394-96; Baydawi, IV, pp. 87,90. See above, note 10.
87. He takes the custom back to the burial of Aaron, p. 171. He tells of
a book sent to David from heaven sealed with gold and containing thirteen
questions to be put to Solomon (p. 202); of an apocalyptic writing sealed in
an iron box (p. 246); of another buried in a mountain (p. 242); of gold
tablets containing the history of a vanished empire found in a cave in Yemen
(p. 102); of magic books dug up from beneath Solomon's throne (p. 35).
88. M. Black (in note 24), p. 12.
89. Tha'labi, p. 288. When Ali finishes his story, the most skeptical
Jew confesses that he has not added nor removed a single letter from the
account in the Torah. (P. 292.)
90. Various estimates are given by Huber, p. 102. (Cf. Analecta
Bollandiana 72 [1954]:266; B. Heller (note 3), pp. 205,211.)
91. It "belongs to the secrets of heaven and earth." (Tabari,
Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 152; Shirbini, II, p. 366.) The Prophet spent forty
nights trying to comprehend it. (As-Suyuti, Lubab al-nuqul . . . [1935], p.
145.)
92. Qurtubi, X, p. 386, who quotes Tabari as saying that the Jews also
could not agree about it. It could hardly have been a Christian invention,
since no amount of manipulating can fit the conventional three centuries of
sleep into the century-and-a-half interval between Decius and either
Theodosius. (Cf. Analecta Bollandiana 66 [1948]:195.)
93. Heller (note 3), pp. 206-7. Onias slept from the destruction of the
First Temple to the completion of the Second: "The parallel with the Seven
Sleepers . . . is of course obvious," comments the Jewish Encyclopedia (1902),
IX, p. 405. Some say the Seven fell asleep until the land became Moslem.
(Damiri, II, p. 351.)
94. Analecta Bollandiana 68 (1950):351.
95. H. H. Rowley, in Expository Times 63 (1951/2):381; M. H. Segal, in
Journal of Biblical Literature 70 (1951): 146, note 59, and p. 130; Ysuf Ali,
The Holy Qur'an, II, p. 720, note 2337. The 390 and the 20 years "belong to
the remote past. . . . Their writers lack any real knowledge of the origin and
early history of the sect; hence the nebulous atmosphere pervading all the
documents. . . the characters. . . appearing as types rather than
individuals." (E. Wiesenberg, in Vetus Testamentum 5 [1955]:304-5.)
96. Above, note 87, Tabari's story is discussed by Huber, pp. 254- 55.
97. Tha'labi, p. 292. They say nakûnu `alu amrin wahadin, Tabari,
Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 132, where the last word suggests the much-discussed
"yahad" of the Scrolls.
98. Nearly all Arabic sources mention this. Tha'labi, pp. 292-93, even
notes that they gained the repute of being money-changers.
99. Tha'labi, p. 291. See above, note 79. Huber, p. 455, sees a Jewish
tradition in the spring and the trees, and Heller, note 37, p. 201, notes that
the society eschewed pork.
100. Qurtubi, X, p. 360; Nasafi, II, p. 278. Both mention caves in the
plural. (Cf. Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 132,151.)
101. On al-Raqim as a going concern, see Tabari, XV, p. 135: Ibn Kathir,
III, pp. 74-75. In some Western versions Tamikh is only twelve or fifteen
years old, and in all of them the youths must fetch all their food and drink
from the city-they were not self-sustaining. There was a tradition that the
activities of the Cave included even dancing, according to Qurtubi, X, p. 466,
who describes the pious exercises of the community.
102. Tha'labi, pp. 289,294; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 74, who mention the
dramatic episode of the stripping of their military insignia by the enraged
emperor. This is a characteristic episode in the cycle of youthful military
heroes who are martyred by the emperor but then come alive to prove the
resurrection. Such were St. Mercurius, St. Victor, and St. Sebastian.
Tha'labi's St. George, pp. 299-305, clearly belongs to the cycle.
103. Tha'labi, p. 291; Qurtubi, X, p. 369; Ibn Kathir, III, p. 75;
as-Sa'adi, V, p. 10, etc. On Qumran, see M. Black, note 40, p. 141.
104. Once a week (Tabari, cited by Huber, p. 279); every seven years
(Qurtubi, X, p. 370); twice a year (Baydawi, IV, p. 94); once a year at New
Year's (Tha'labi, p. 291; Nasafi, II, p. 281; Qurtubi).
105. Tha'labi, p. 291; Nasafi, II, p. 281; Qurtubi, X, 369; Baydawi, IV,
p. 93. Ibn Kathir, III, p. 75, see astronomical significance in these
arrangements. Huber, p. 295, discusses the awakening by the sun.
106. S. Talmon, in Revue de Qumran 2(1960): 475; E. Ettisch, in
Theologische Literaturzeitung 88 (1963): 186, 188,191-92.
107. E. Rohde, in Rheinisches Museum jûr Philologie, Neue Folge 35
(1880): 157-59,162-63. Their names have great "valeur prophylactique"
throughout the Moslem world. (Massignon, in Anal. Boll. 68 [1950]:249-50); for
their healing offices, see ibid., pp. 247-48, and for dreams, see Huber, p.
135.
108. J. M. Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (New York:
Doubleday, 1960), p. 73. The Essenes specialized in "Traumdeuteund
Weissagekunst"; R. Eisler, note 49, II, p. 17.
109. Allegro, pp. 70-71. (Cf. Tha'labi, p. 291; Nasafi, II, p. 280;
Qurtubi, X, p. 369; as-Sa'adi, V, p. 10.)
110. Tha'labi, pp. 294-95; Tabari, Jami'al-bayan, XV, p. 131; Damiri, II,
pp. 339-40; Shirbini, II, pp. 352-53; Baydawi, IV, pp. 85-86:". . . lift up
your heads, eat, and trust in God." On the Hebrew origin of jabbar, see K.
Ahrens, note 43, p. 19.
111. Epiphanius, Adv. haer., Haer. 29, no. 5, in PG, 41, col. 397.
112. Al-Biruni, note 56, p. 284. The added evidence of the Companions of
the Cave tips the scales against the reading maqariba, favored by N. Golb, in
Journal of Religion 41 (1961):42-44.
113. This expression puzzled Huber, p. 283, as the only purely Christian
tradition in the Koran, where it is accordingly strangely out of place. But J.
Horovitz, in HUCA 2 (1925):178, showed that "it is by no means assured that. .
. Mohammed really meant the martyrs of Najran," and that the only reason for
such an assumption is lack of evidence as to what else the "People of the Pit"
could refer to. The Dead Sea Scrolls now supply that evidence.
114. Baydawi, IV, p. 91 (Khiram); Damiri, II, p. 350 (Haram, Khadam);
Qurtubi, X, p. 367 (Khiram). The usual difficulty with pointing is apparent.
115. Damiri, II, p. 341. Nasafi, II, p. 285, also says the dog was Raqim.
Tha'labi, p. 290, gives a list of suggested names, not including this one.
116. Ibn Kathir, III, pp. 73,78; Qurtubi, X, p. 360. The quotation is
from Allegro, note 108, p. 70.
117. This has been discussed by Massignon, in Anal. Boll. 68, pp. 245-60.
"Qumran and The Companions of the Cave" first appeared in Revue de Qumran 5
(April 1965): 177-98.