What is Christian depends on one’s point of view.  Medieval Christianity was very different from Protestantism.  As I’ve noted around here a few times, Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 presents a very different picture of traditional Christianity than do Protestants.

So what is “traditional/historical” Christianity?  As Karen Jolley, a scholar who focusses on Anglo-Saxon Christianity, asserts, “Because of the amorphous nature of Christian practice as it changed through time, it is hard to isolate what Christianity is or was….  Theology seeks a timeless definition, a set of standard by which to measure what is Christian and what is not ….  But from a historical standpoint, this is impossible” [1].

Theologians will debate and discuss what they believe proper Christian belief and practice is, as they have always done.  But this is not the same a describing what Christian practice actually was historically.  In the words of Norman Tanner, “Christianity, however, has never existed in a ‘pure’ form except in the person of Jesus Christ….  It does not exist in the abstract, rather in individuals and particular historical situations”  [2].

The truth is, you can find even the most radical Mormon ideas and practices throughout the history of Christianity.  Such doctrines were usually seen as unorthodox and often suppressed, but they still existed in “historical/traditional” Christian practice and belief.  Pre-existence, deification, heavenly marriage, marital experimentation, utopianism, continuing revelation, heavenly mother, etc. all have a history within Christian practice.

Kocku von Stuckrad argues in his brilliant new book Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe:  Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities, that there have always been multiple Christianities. ”It is not that Christian Europe never existed; instead, Christianity in Europe has always been diverse and comprised many forms of beliefs and practices that populated the minds of believers” [3]. Von Stuckrad traces the “esoteric” components of Western Christianity (where one finds most the Mormon-looking ideas mentioned above) which are often overlooked or suppressed in narratives of Christian history.

 Von Stuckrad goes so far as to call the word tradition “a polemical term.”  This is because traditions are constructed by those in power to differentiate between what they see as legitimate and illegitimate.  ”It is not a candidate for an analytical term in the study of religion.  Although there are identifiable continuities in the history of religions, these continuities do not necessarily constitute tradition.  Instead, tradition is the evocation and application, if not the invention, of a set of continuities for certain identifiable purposes” [4].  

Thus theologians will seek to define and claim “traditional” Christianity in opposition to that Christianities they do not like.  This is quite natural (Mormons do it too, there’s nothing wrong with it).  But we ought to be aware, as von Stuckard warns, of the theological premises behind such actions and the difference between history and theology.  “Master narratives, even if they are based on historically dubious material, are capable of creating structures of power and society realities” [5].

At the first European Mormon Studies Association meeting, someone asked Douglas Davies if Mormonism was Christian, to which he responded, “Well, yeah, because to scholars, Christians are simple people who say they are Christians.”  I agree, which makes my medieval advisors’ thesis suggestion not really feasible since there’s nothing really to defend.  Of course practitioners have always debated how to define Christianity, and Mormonism (as well as the various strains on which it drew) has been very controversial.  Why that is is a topic worth exploring.

___________

[1] Karen Louise Jolley, “Magic, Miracle, and Popular Practice in the Early Medieval West: Anglo-Saxon England,” in Religion, Science, and Magic: In Concert and Conflict, ed. Jacob Neusner et. al (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 179.

[2] Norman Tanner, The Ages of Faith: Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), 195.

[3] Kocku von Stuckrad, Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010) 14.

[4] Ibid., 42.

[5] Ibid., 4.

This book made my head spin.  Coudert sets about attacking cherished ontologies and historiographical dogmas in ways I’m overwhelmingly in agreement with, but the book still left me dizzy.  Coudert comes out swinging and doesn’t let up.   Most brilliant is the way Coudert blends these categories with each other and the social history of the periods she covers.

After citing various critics who have questioned the reality of religion, magic, and science as ontological categories,

The response to such a wholesale rejection of the topics of this book cannot be in the same vein as the famous remark made by Justice Potter when called upon to define pornography, ‘I know it when I see it.’  Many of us may think we know religion, magic, and science when we see them, but the truth is we don’t, and this book is about why we don’t and how what we think we know about all three came into existence during the early modern period itself.  Our definitions of religion, magic, and science are just that, ours, modern definitions that have a long and contested history.  Words, like ideas, beliefs, and institutions have not always been the same but change with changing circumstances.  While this seems obvious, the implications are not always understood, much less accepted (xiii).

Furthermore, Coudert notes that these categories overlapped and the separation of the categories “tell us more, however, about those who made them then the actual situation. Being ‘modern’ meant that one rejected magic as ‘primitive’ and embraced science as ‘rational’ and ‘civilized.’ It also meant that one drew a line separating the human from the non-human nature from culture, and the natural form the supernatural. The problem was and still is that most people do not really hold to these lines of separation” (xvi).

Coudert begins her story by describing the optimism of the Renaissance being snuffed out by the pessimism of the Reformation: “one of the bloodiest, most intolerant, and pessimistic periods in European history” (6). Coudert calls the era “The Age of Augustine,” “because of the harsh and unflattering view of human nature prevailing among both Protestants and Catholics.” “Augustine had originated the term ‘original sin,’” explains Coudert “and claimed that as a result of the Fall human nature was ‘wounded, hurt, damaged, destroyed. This was the view accepted by Lutherans, Calvinists, and many Catholics in the early decades of the Reformation. Not only had the Fall made it impossible for humans to act morally, but it had irreparably damaged Adam’s intelligence and ability to reason” (xxi).

In addition to the turmoil of the Reformation, the era brought a number of scientific shifts in world view, particularly Copernicus’s sun-centered universe and the discovery of the New World. “However disastrous the Fall and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden was in the minds of believing Christians, the fall from the pre-Copernican into the post-Copernican universe was even more traumatic” (8).  ”With the demise of this worldview went the framework that had allowed Europeans to understand the world, their place in it, and their purpose and identity for centuries” (7).  The universe now contained “unfathomable vastness.” There was “no longer a clear sense of ‘up’ or ‘down’ and hence no commonsensical place for heaven and hell” (9).

Numerous other developments called into questions old authorities. The discovery of the New World rearranged all sorts of categories of description for flora and fauna as well as humans. The printing press made the comparison of texts much easier, facilitating the discovery of disagreements and contradictions between texts. Rapid urbanization seemed to undermine the foundations of society.

“A new system of order was desperately needed, and in major respects it was built on the backs of women, especially witches” (80). The Reformation was the era of the great witch-hunts, and 71-92 percent of the condemned were women (64). “Between 1480 and 1700 more women were executed for this crime than for all other crimes put together” (65).  While it’s important to note that most early modern people really did believe that there were evil people (mostly women) out there doing harmful magic, “disorderly” (outspoken, unmarried, assertive) women were the overwhelming targets of such accusations.  Coudert cites Mary Douglas’s work on purity and danger and how sacrifice is used to restore purity.  “In early modern Europe witches were forced to assume the role of sacrificial scapegoats. Their elimination would restore social equilibrium and eradicate pollution” (81).

Persecution of women in the early modern are was not confined to witch-craft prosecution. The Reformation also spawned The “Godly State”: “church and secular authorities on both sides of the religious divide joined forces to establish efficient and stable bureaucratic societies grounded in an obedient, disciplined, and orthodox citizenry, whose primary allegiance was to church and state” (83).

Authorities worked to reform all levels of society, but disorderly women were a principal target. Things were particularly bad for Protestant women. “With the abolition of saints, including female ones, and the demotion of Mary to a suitably subservient position, Protestant women were deprived of female role models other than that of an obedient wife.” Coudert quotes Luther: “The woman… is like a nail driven into a wall. She sits at home … as one who has been deprived of the ability of administering those affairs that are outside and concern the state…. In this way Eve is punished.” “Catholic women could a least for a priest when things got tough at home; but for Protestant women in a very real sense the priest, pope, and king lived at home.”  Thus, Coudert concludes, “It is impossible to accept Steven Ozment’s contention that Reformation morality allowed women ‘a position of high authority [as mothers] and equal respect [to men]” (94-95).

Coudert has a number of great quotes about Protestent men hating their bodies and attempting to stamp out any vestiges of medieval fun. “A new world order had indeed been created” (109).

Yet a new light was to break forth amid the darkness of the era. Positive views of humanity began to reemerge in the lead up to the Enlightenment. Augustine’s pessimism was rejected in favor of a loving and kind God. If Adam had been damaged by the Fall, could humans regain their original condition? “As a result of these speculations and attempts to restore man to Adam’s original perfection, by the end of the seventeenth century what might be described as an ‘anthropological revolution’ had occurred: a more optimistic view of human nature emerged and along with it a positive attitude toward life and the ability of humans to change and improve their world and themselves” (xxi).

Coudert argues that alchemy provided the link between the Renaissance and Enlightenment. “Alchemists were essentially a fifth column within every Christian denomination; they carried forward the optimistic ideals of Renaissance Platonists into the age of the Enlightenment.”  Rejecting Augustine’s notion of original sin, alchemists and Christian Platonists in general believed that by diligent study and holy living, humans and the world in general could re-obtain Adam’s state before the fall (170).

Further, both the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment were founded on alchemy, argues Coudert (164). Both Isaac Newton (the founder of modern physics) and Robert Boyle (the founder of modern chemistry) were deeply immerse in alchemy and their scientific discoveries were fundamentally indebted to their alchemical studies. Fundamental to alchemy was the belief that “human beings had the intelligence and ability to improve the world. Alchemists tipped the scales in favor of art over nature and in so doing fostered the belief in progress that became the hallmark of modern science” (165). “The old idea that religion and magic, as well as esoteric thought of all kinds, had to disappear before science could emerge is quite simply wrong” (131).

The work of Roy Porter has shifted the center of the Enlightenment away from Voltaire and Paris (as Peter Gay would have it) to England and Newton and Locke.  Thus it was interesting to see that John Locke was a student a student not only of alchemy but also of kabbalah.  What are we to make of the idea that the Enlightenment and our notions of modernity were built on modes of thought that they were supposed to have rejected?

Thus Coudert demonstrates the ways religion, science, and magic had always intermingled, casting additional doubt on scholarly attempts to draw boundaries between the categories.  “The years Newton spent studying the Book of Daniel and Revelations and pouring over alchemical books and manuscripts in the laboratory he set up in Cambridge were of the utmost importance in shaping his ultimate view of the mechanics of the universe and his concept of gravity” (195).  “What becomes apparent,” Coudert concludes, “is that our categories and definitions of religion, magic, and science do not fit the way people viewed the world in the early modern West. Given the fraught history and contentious nature of the way these terms have been defined, they may not even fit the actual thinking of most people in the world today, but that is another subject” (196).

______________

Full disclosure: Dr. Coudert just recently agreed to be on my dissertation committee (Catherine Albanese dropped out).  I’m thrilled.

Gardner seeks to understand the nature of Joseph Smith’s translation of the Book of Mormon by a thorough examination of the text coupled with descriptions of the translation process.  Gardner compares the Book of Mormon translation to regular translations and argues for three types: literal (an exact, word-for-word translation), functional (a translation that conveys meaning instead of exact wording) and conceptual.  Gardener argues that the Book of Mormon translation fits the functionalist type: it is a translation of the concepts into the idioms of Joseph Smith’s world.  Gardner goes further, arguing that research on cognition suggests how Smith translated: revelation was given at a pre-language level and then translated into English by Smith.  Gardner argues that such is a “natural” account of the translation and that his description still posits Smith as the translator.

The book does a great job of analyzing the textual evidence: Gardner gives the various studies of the Book of Mormon text full treatment along with the various theories of what the text suggests about the translation.  Further, Gardner’s theory of eidetic images (270) in the brain does much to help with the issue of how revelation may occur.  However, Gardner’s claim to a “natural” explanation of translation is problematic since he asserts that it came by means of revelation: “it was the Lord (or another divine entity) that placed the meaning of the plates in Joseph’s mind” (276).  Gardner rejects Royal Skousen’s assertion that “some other entity did the translation into English,” (254) even though Gardner’s model is not fundamentally different than Skousen’s: God spoke to Smith in some way, and Smith dictated to his scribes.  Gardner nuances the process in useful ways, but the basic procedure remains the same: revelation.  Ultimately, while Smith was certainly a part of the process, as Gardner asserts so emphatically, it is difficult, if not impossible to say where the line is between Smith and the divine.  ”Of course, anything is possible when the basic premises are the miraculous translation of the Book of Mormon and the absolute power of God,” Gardner admits (304).  I’d argue that this premis muddies the waters considerably;  ”For he speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding” (2 Ne 31:3).  Thus it is difficult to know if contemporary idioms are used because of Smith’s interjection or if God himself found that to be the best way to communicate.  To try to draw the line, one must make theological assertions about how God operates.  ”It is easy to see how Joseph could be so heavily influenced by the KJV New Testament; it is harder to explain why a divine interpreter would be,” asserts Gardner (257).   But such assertions are often in the eye of the beholder; perhaps the divine found that language an effective way to communicate.  Thus figuring out how “the gift and power” worked is a very difficult, and I would argue, otherworldly task.  Gardner is dismissive of Kevin Barney’s assertion of “complex translation”–sometimes literal, sometimes not–saying an overarching theory is needed (247).  But there is no explanation of why God would need to adhere to only one method.  Ultimately, I found Barney’s complex-translation model to be the most likely.

Though the book has some other problems (the first section on the historical context of Smith’s world was not up to date on the latest research [1] and was ultimately unnecessary; the book could have been condensed considerably) this is nonetheless a very useful contribution.  Gardner’s examination of the text and the scholarship is very thorough and his use of cognitive science should pave the way to further research.

__________

[1] Loyd Ericson wanted me review the book because of the content of Gardner’s first section.  Since the first section of the book was not central to the book’s main argument, I review that section in this footnote.

Here Gardner seeks to give context for Smith’s activities with his seer stone.  Gardner rightly notes problems with the tem magic, noting an important divide between urban and rural worldviews: that urban people often call the practices of the rural people “magic.”  This is true, but there is more to this dynamic than just the rural/urban divide (though that divide is important).  For instance, plenty of urban people engaged in activities deemed magical.

Gardner nonetheless makes a valid point with this distinction but makes a fundamental error by reifying the categories.  Gardner argues, as have other scholars, that Smith started out practicing magic but then shifted to religion. The big shift came with the Moroni visitation and the translation of the Book of Mormon, Gardner argues.  ”Joseph had crossed the threshold between magic/religion and the rural/urban tradition and brought his seer stones with him because they participated in that new context” (102).  This sentence demonstrates the problems of reifying the magic/religion divide.  Smith did not suddenly become an “urban” person by translating the Book of Mormon with the seer stone.  However Smith viewed his seer stones, they were not acceptably religious to the notions of orthodox religion (Protestant) of his day.   As I’ve stated a number of times on this blog, these categories are in the eye of the beholder; people draw the line between magic and religion in all different ways.  Smith’s definitions would have been very different from established Protestant clergymen.  Smith in no way was trying to accomodate Mormonism to the orthodox Protestant worldview; he rejected much of that worldview.  Thus, Gardner would have been better off to have rejected the religion/magic divide, and to have instead simply sought to explore how Smith understood his world.

Ultimately, Garder was not up on the latest scholarship on the the popular religion of Smith’s day (I’ve posted a number of reviews of such books on this blog).  This is understandable, considering the breadth of Gardner’s topic.  I’d be interested to see if such work would alter his conclusions at all.

But again, this was not central to the books main argument, which made a valuable contribution.

Sources and Data: The data that suggests that Smith had contact with Neoplatonism comes primarily from three studies:  D. Michael Quinn’s Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (1987), John Brooke’s Refiner’s Fire (1994), and Lance Owens’s “Joseph Smith and the Kabbalah: The Occult Connection” (1994).[1]  Yet these studies labeled the Neoplatonic tenets “magic,” Hermetic, or “occult,” and thus need to be reinterpreted in the context of Neoplatonism.  Quinn’s Magic World View surfaces the most extensive evidence.  Problems with the term “magic” as a scholarly category are evident in Quinn’s work, but the scope of Quinn’s research was tremendous and suggests many of the ways in which Neoplatonic ideas could have gotten to Joseph Smith.

Quinn documented the Smiths’ involvement in various folk rites, including ritual treasure digging, Smith’s use of a seer stone, and other folk rituals.  Most significantly, he surfaced three manuscripts with various diagrams that are owned by the descendants of Joseph Smith’s brother Hyrum (the family kept a number of artifacts).  Quinn’s extensive research showed that the diagrams were taken from grimoires of Reginald Scot and Ebenezer Sibley for the purposes of what is often called “ritual magic.”[2]  Quinn argued that the Smiths’ likely had what he calls “occult mentors” to teach them such practices.  One such was Lumen Walter, who claimed to have come from a well-off family that sent him to Europe to study.[3]  As I elaborate below, the purposed of these “lamens” were in line with Neoplatonic theurgy (conjuring angels and protection from harm) and the books from which the diagrams were copied use the term theurgy.[4]

Critics of Quinn charged that these grimoires were rare and expensive and that the Smiths’ were unlikely to have owned them.  Owen Davies’s weighed in on the issue in his study of the history of grimoires.  Davies concurred with Quinn that the diagrams on the Smith’s lamens derived from Scot and Sibly, which Davies referred to as “hefty compilations of early modern Neoplatonist wisdom.”  Though Davies agreed that the Smiths were not likely to have owned the books, “Quinn’s thesis,” he asserted, “does not stand or fall on the basis that Smith owned copies of Scot and Sibly, since extracts from all three were to be found in the manuscript grimoires and charms kept by some English cunning-folk and in those sold by the London occult dealer John Denly.  It is quite likely that some of those found their way to America where they were copied once again.”  Thus the Smiths’ lamens and ritual practices can be considered part of what Davies describes as the “democratization of high magic.”[5]

Most impressive was Quinn’s exhaustive study of print texts in Joseph Smith’s environment.  Quinn not only examined the content listings of the libraries in Smith’s vicinity but he also went through the local newspapers for advertisements of books sold in the area.  He compiled a massive list of books available in the area. One book store in Bloomfield claimed to have 12,000 to 14,000 volumes, which came to 3 books for each person in the area; heavy competition forced sellers to offer very cheap prices. A number of works for sale in Smith’s vicinity were influenced by Neoplatonic ideas, including works of Romantic poets Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth, David Ramsey’s The Travels of Cyrus, and Edmund Spencer’s The Fairie Queen.[6]  Smith’s mother said that Joseph “was less inclined to the study of books than any childe we had but much more given to reflection and deep study.”[7]  However a neighbor wrote that as a youth, Smith was part of a debating club that met to “solve some portenous [sic] questions of moral or political ethics,” suggesting that Smith was engaged with the ideas circulating in his vicinity.[8]

Quinn also studied numerous belief systems and practices deemed occult including Swedenborgianism.  Mormonism had a number of parallels with the visions of Emmanuel Swedenborg including a three-tired heaven (also in Proclus), marriage in heaven (as in Plato’s Symposium), among others (discussed below).  An early Mormon convert who had an interest in Swedenborg asked Smith’s opinion of the visionary in 1839.  Smith replied, “Emmanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come, but for daily food he perished.”  Quinn found summaries of Swedenborg in Smith’s local library.[9]

Other occult practices that the Smiths believed, according to Quinn, were astrology and Freemasonry.  The idea that powers emanated from the heavens was central in Neoplatonism and explained in Proclus.[10]  Mormons noticed the similarities between Mormon temple rites and Freemasonry from the beginning.  Quinn noticed these as well but argued that the similarities were “superficial.”  Instead, Quinn argued that Smith’s temple ritual more closely resembled ancient mystery rites and found numerous descriptions of such rites in contemporary sources including in a book that Smith owned.[11]  Mystery rites were very important to the Neoplatonists: both Proclus and the Emperor Julian sought to be initiated into as many mysteries as they could and Proclus saw mystery rites as essential to assent.[12]  Thus Quinn’s research suggests several sources of Smith’s contact with Neoplatonism: theurgical rites suggested by the family lamens and Neoplatonic ideas available in numerous books for sale and on loan in Smith’s vicinity.

In 1994 Brook published his study, which relied heavily on Quinn.  Brooke proposed Hermeticism as an overarching theme and argued that the various “magic” and “occult” sources that Quinn noted were transmitters of Hermetic thought.  Yet Brooke went beyond Quinn’s paradigm, arguing that “Mormonism springs from the sectarian tradition of the Radical Reformation, in fact from its most extreme fringe.”[13]  Steven Ozment argues that early modern radicals were heavily influenced by late medieval mysticism, which was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism.[14]  Brooke tied Mormonism back to the radical sectarians of the English Civil War (Quakers, Baptists, Fifth Monarchist, Ranters, Diggers, Levelers), but also argued for similarities with German sectarians who settled in Pennsylvania.  Smith had direct contact with Quakers and Universalists (two groups that Brooke highlighted).  The Quakers had a meetinghouse in Palmyra and Smith’s earliest backer, Martin Harris, had a Quaker ancestry.[15]  Scholars have argued that the Quaker doctrine of the inner light is Neoplatonic; John Everarde, who promoted ideas similar to the Quakers just prior to their rise, translated Pseudo-Dionysius into English along with the works of early modern Neoplatonic mystics.[16]  Joseph Smith’s grandfather was a Universalist; Proclus taught universal salvation.[17]

Finally, Lance Owens, also in 1994, argued for the influence of Kabbalah, which has considerable similarities to Neoplatonism.[18]  Owens noted the many similarities between Mormonism and Kabbalah and argued for the influence of Alexander Niebaur on Smith.  Niebaur was a Prussian Jew, who converted to Christianity then moved to England, where he converted to Mormonism in 1839.  Neibaur emigrated to Nauvoo in 1841 and “immediately went to work for Joseph Smith.”  Neibaur showed his knowledge of Kabbalah in a two-piece article he wrote on transmigration of souls (a Neoplatonic and Kabbalistic idea) for the Mormon periodical in 1842, where he cited numerous Kabbalistic sources.  In 1844, the year Smith died, Neibaur spent time tutoring Smith in Hebrew and German.  Owens argued that Smith’s King Follett Discourse (at the funeral of King Follett, discussed below) was heavily influenced by Neibaur and Kabbalah.  In the speech, Smith referred to the Hebrew of Genesis 1:1, arguing that it should say that “the head God called forth the Gods” and told them to create, a reading in keeping with both the Kabbalah and Plato’s Timaeus.[19]

Yet Smith had suggested a number of these radical ideas prior to the arrival of Neibaur.  Richard Bushman agrees with Owens that Smith’s later doctrines show similarities to Kabbalah, “but these came on the scene a decade after Joseph’s revelations defined the endowment of power as an encounter with God.  We can scarcely imagine him steeping himself in Kabbalistic literature in Manchester and Harmony,” New York, where Smith started his church.[20]  In his second edition of Magic World View published in 1998, Quinn added a section on Kabbalah in which he identified lengthy descriptions of Kabbalah in histories of the Jews in print in Smith’s day.  John Allen’s Modern Judaism (first edition 1816, second 1830) had a thirty-page summary of the Kabbalah that had wording similar to some of Smith’s Neoplatonic-sounding revelations.[21]  Furthermore, theurgical practices, like the ones suggested by the Smith’s lamens, had long been influenced by Kabbalah.  Richard Kieckhefer argues that the Sworn Book of Honorius, a medieval theurgical text that claimed to create a vision of God, drew on Kabbalah because seeing God was a central purpose in Kabbalah but was a violation of orthodox Christianity.[22]  Early modern theurgist Cornelius Agrippa was also influenced by Kabbalah and made seeing God a central purpose.[23]  Smith’s revelations likewise made seeing God a priority.[24]  Although Smith never immersed himself in Kabbalah, certain aspects of the practice could have influenced him early on.

These studies unearthed the bulk of the evidence.  Additional evidence includes an early Mormon poem that speaks of Adam “emanating” from God similar to a line from John Allen’s summary of Kabbalah in his Modern Judaism (first edition 1816, second 1830) that spoke of “the first emanation of Deity, called Adam Kadmon.”[25]  The poem was likely written by one of Smith’s close associates, perhaps Sydney Rigdon. An adaptation of this poem was printed in the Mormon’s periodical in 1833 that changed the line to say that God “emanated man” rather than Adam.  The change was likely made by W. W. Phelps, the editor of the periodical.[26]  Rigdon and Phelps were both older and better educated than Smith so that this particular incident suggest the possibility of these and others of Smith followers being sources for Neoplatonic ideas.

This dissertation will also expand the discussion to include Joseph Smith’s political thought and utopianism.  Smith long sought to create the perfect society and espoused many ideas found in Plato that were espoused by contemporary utopians.  Thomas More’s Utopia was sold in Smith’s neighborhood and utopian Robert Owen proselytized and set up communities near Mormonism first headquarters in Kirtland, Ohio.[27]

I am currently undertaking a sociological study concerning members of the BRITISH & IRISH LDS Church, OR those who were PREVIOUSLY affiliated or expatriates. The survey has 33 questions in 9 sections. Would you please mind participating. All information gathered is anonymous and can not be used to identify either an individual or an IP address. The survey is found here:

Furthermore, we are pleased to announce the publication of the fourth issue of the International Journal of Mormon Studies. This is a peer reviewed journal and indexed by EBSCO. The current issue and past issues may be found here. Note that in contrast to many academic journals, IJMS articles may be downloaded for free. We do this in order to make this work available to readers around the world.

Please consider submitting your own work for publication.

Francis Yates’s narrative of Hermeticism in the West began with the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum and wound its way through various early modern “magi” to the Rosicrucians and Freemasons.[1] In doing so, Yates elevated this form of “magic” and even argued for its influence on the scientific revolution. Yates’s arguments about science were the most controversial, but recently scholars have critiqued Yates’s use of the term Hermeticism.[2] The critiques have been on three points: 1) that Neoplatonism is a better term than Hermeticism for the movement Yates described, 2) that the movement did not reemerge in the Renaissance but instead had medieval roots, and 3) that “magic” is a problematic term and that “theurgy” is a better descriptor for what Yates’s “magi” were doing.

Brian Copernhaver was one of the first to critique Yates on the first point in 1988, noting that Ficino’s and Agrippa’s “magic” (theurgy) derived from Proclus rather than the Corpus Hermeticum. “The works of Plotinus, Porphyry, Imablichus, Synesius, and Proclus,” argued Copenhaver, “are the most important ancient philosophical sources for the theory of magic in the Renaissance. Research on magic in the Renaissance should shift its attention to these texts and to their interpretation in the early modern period.”[3] Also in 1988, Nicholas Clulee’s biography of John Dee, who had previously been interpreted as one of the Hermetic magi, argued that medieval sources, particularly Roger Bacon, were of greater influence on Dee than those of the Renaissance.[4] Both of these studies would play a significant role in the reconfiguration of Yates’s thesis; yet Yates’s model continued to be influential, inspiring John Brooke’s Refiner’s Fire in 1994, which traced the hermetic ideas Yates had articulated from the English Civil War to Joseph Smith. Works by Arthur Versluis and Catherine Albanese expanded Brooke’s work to broader themes in American religion and culture.[5]

Recently, the work of Wouter Hannegraaf, Gyorgi Szonyi, Florian Ebeling, Stephen Clucas, and Owen Davies have reconfigured the Yates thesis along the line mentioned in the introduction: questioning the use of the term hermeticism, arguing for continuity with medieval thought and practice, and rejecting the use of the term magic.[6] Yates had used the term Hermeticsm broadly, referring both to themes that the were in the Corpus Hermeticum and to movements that she saw as similar, like alchemy and Kabbalah, despite their not being mentioned in the Corpus. This was too vague a definition, the critics argued: said Gyorgi Szonyi, “Taking all this into consideration, one has to conclude that the category of hermeticism must either be enlarged ad infinitum to accommodate all the significant phenomena Frances Yates tried to bring under this label; or it has to be understood as a well-defined but by no means generally influential trend.”[7]

Furthermore, following Copenhaver, these authors argued that Neoplatonism rather than Hermeticism was the philosophy central to Ficino’s project. “Frances A. Yates,” asserted Florian Ebeling, “surely exaggerated when she claimed that Florentine Renaissance philosophy had a fundamentally Hermetic core”—Ficino’s focus, Ebeling explains, was Plato.[8]

Second, these scholars argued for medieval continuity: “There was no ‘rebirth of magic’” in the Renaissance, declared Owen Davies, “no great break with the past, but rather a continuation and development of medieval ideas.”[9] Stephen Clucas called Yates’s narrative “Burckhardtian”: Yates spoke “of the civilizing force of Renaissance culture triumphing over narrow mediaevalism.” In doing so, argued Clucas, “Yates consistently underestimates the continuity and persistence of mediaeval magical practices and techniques in early-modern magic.”[10] Szonyi, Ebeling, Culcas, and Davies all traced Neoplatonic ideas from the Arabic revival of classical thought in the twelfth century and noted the influence on early modern thinkers.[11] Clucas was the most explicit, arguing for the influence of “medieval theurgy” on John Dee. By “medieval theurgy,” Clucas meant a series of text from Arabic sources attributed to Solomon with theurgic purposes.[12]

Only Hanegraaf directly challenged the use of the term magic, arguing that it only be used as an emic category and not an etic one.[13] The others still used the term although they acknowledged the term’s problems.[14] The work of Hanegraaf, along with that of Naomi Janowitz and Randall Styers, convinces me to try to find better, more specific terms for practices that are labeled “magic.”[15]

Despite these critiques, Szonyi advocated “a kind of cautious return to the Yatesian ‘master narrative,’ albeit with some modifications.” The master narrative that Szonyi proposed was the focus on deification (or what Szonyi called “exaltation”) in the Western Tradition and its significance for Dee.[16] The fact that this was a major theme in both Christian Platonism and Mormonism (“exaltation” was even Joseph Smith’s preferred term for deification) makes Syonzi’s master narrative useful for this dissertation. Furthermore, the issue of Hermeticism is complicated by the fact that Hermeticism and Neoplatonism greatly overlapped,[17] that Hermeticism influenced the late Neoplatonists Imablichus and Proclus,[18] that Hermeticism has murky origins,[19] and that where Hermeticism differs from Neoplatonism it does so in ways that are in line with early Mormon theology (greater emphasis on the body, sexuality,[20] and the idea that God was human.[21]) Szonyi simply combined the two terms into “neoplatonic hermeticism.” Because of the awkwardness of this term and that fact that Neoplatonism was more central and better defined, I will focus on tracing Neoplatonic influences while noting that Hermeticism was also important. That is to say, Yates’s work is still valuable and Brooke was right to link Mormonism to her work. This fuller context for Yates’s paradigm will more fully illuminate the work that Brooke initiated.[22]

I will trace Neoplatonic influence on the West by noting five major strains. First is the medieval scientists and medieval cosmology: Neoplatonism influenced the animated cosmos of the medieval world, the survivals of which were deemed “occult” after the scientific revolution.[23] Second the Rhineland mysticism of Meister Eckhart and Johann Tauler greatly influenced early modern mystics and later evangelicals.[24] Third, the theurgists who practiced what is often called “ritual magic,” building on the work of Stephen Clulee and Gyorgy Szonyi. Number four is Kabbalah, or a form of Jewish mysticism that drew heavily on Neoplatonism.[25] Kabbalah greatly influenced Christian mysticism and ritual theurgy but also influenced Smith directly. The fifth strain was the translation of the Neoplatonic texts themselves into English by Thomas Taylor and their influence on Romantics and Transcendentalists of Smith’s era. All of these strands influenced early modern Christian Platonism and all had influences on early Mormonism. I will mention individual tenets of Christian Platonism in greater detail in the chapters focusing on the development of Smith’s theology.

____________
[1] Francis Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 1979).

[2] On the scientific implications of Yate’s thesis see H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 169-83.

[3] Brian Copenhaver, “Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Ingrid Merkel and Allen G. Debus (Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988), 93.

[4] Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London: Routledge, 1988). Earlier works that linked Dee to the Yates thesis were Peter French, John Dee: The World of an Elizabethan Magus (London: Routledge, 1972) and Francis Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (London: Routledge, 1979).

[5] Arthur Versluis, The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

[6] Wouter J. Hanegraaff “The Study of Western Esotericism: New Approaches to Christian and Secular Culture,” in New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Vol 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, ed. Peter Antes, Armin W. Geerts, and Randi Warne (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 489-520; Gyorgy E. Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004); Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, forward by Jan Assmann , trans by David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007); Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Stephen Clucas, “John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the Ars Notoria: Renaissance Magic and Medieval Theurgy,” in John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies In English Renaissance Thought, ed. Stephen Clucas, (Springer Dordrecht, The Netherlands: 2010), 231-74.

[7] Szonyi, John Dee’ Occultism, 89.

[8] Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 68, 60-63.

[9] Davies, Grimoires, 46.

[10] Clucas, “John Dee’s Angelic Conversations,” 236.

[11] Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 41-77; Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 27-58; Davies, Grimoires, 25-40.

[12] Clucas, “John Dee’s Angelic Conversations,” 240-41.

[13] Hanegraaff, “The Study of Western Esotericism,” 513-16.

[14] Gyrogi Szonyi admits, “The word magic makes one associate a variety of things which may have little in common,” John Dee’s Occultism, 4. Owen Davies concedes, “Defining the meaning of magic is a far trickier task. For all the time, paper, and intellectual energy spent on trying to do so, there is no overarching answer. Any useful understanding must be tied to the cultures of the people being studies in specific periods and places.” Davies, Grimoires, 2.

[15] Naomi Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (London: Routledge, 2001); Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

[16] Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism, 15.

[17] Ebeling shows that in the history of hermeticism, hermetic ideas and texts were almost always coupled with Neoplatonism. Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes.

[18] Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 20-21.

[19] We almost never know the author of hermetic texts that were written over an extensive time period. Thus the theology in the various texts cannot be seen a single whole. Heirich Dorrie called hermeticism “a thing without corners or edges.” Quoted in Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 11.

[20] Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 15-16.

[21] The Corpus Hermeticum, book X says, “Man is a divine being … earthly Man is a mortal god, and that the celestial God is an immortal man.” Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 111. This is very similar to what Joseph Smith taught near the end of his life (discussed below).

[22] Cathy Cutierrez’s Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) has already applied some of these paradigms.

[23] Davies, Grimoires, 93.

[24] Steven E. Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973). Upon being attacked for being Platonic by orthodox Lutherans, Jacob Spener, the founder of Pietism, defended himself in print against these attacks,” says Florian Ebeling, “maintaining that he had built his doctrine exclusively on the basis of the Bible. And since there were incontestable parallels between his concepts and those of Plato, he reckoned that Plato had also read the Holy Scriptures.” Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 111.

[25] Joseph Dan, Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 41.

Anyway, the latest draft weighed in at 55 pages and 230 footnotes. I’m thinking of doing three posts of some of the introductory material. Here’s number one: [note: a fair amount of this is Ann's wording]

“The Presence of God: Early Mormonism and Neoplatonism”

American religious scholars have found Mormonism perplexing and difficult to categorize. Smith’s theology departed from the orthodox Christianity of his day, which led scholars to ask why Smith departed and what sources he drew upon in doing so. Though many scholars attempted to explain Smith in light of early nineteenth century sources and conflicts, John Brooke argued that, in the context of the early national period, “the combination of temple ritual, polygamous marriage, three-tired heavens, the coequality of spirit and matter, and the promise of godhood is essentially unique.” Further, added Brooke, “Unless one rests ones argument on revelation, Jungian archetypes, or simple reinvention (all of which are of some importance to this problem), we have to ask from where these ideas came.” Brooke changed the dynamic of the discussion by placing Mormonism’s context outside of its immediate environment. “Joseph Smith’s cosmology becomes comprehensible,” he argued, “only when it is placed in a setting broader than that of antebellum America.” Brooke asserted that Mormonism was fundamentally “hermetic,” drawing on Francis Yates’s thesis about the influence of the Corpus Hermeticum on the religion, science, and magic of early modern Europe. [1]

I argue that Brooke was right to link Mormonism to Yates’s thesis but that recent reevaluations of Yates’s work allow us to now situate Mormonism within a richer understanding of the history of Christianity. These critiques suggest that Neoplatoinic theurgy is a better term than “high magic” for the activities Yates describes (and raise questions concerning the use of the term magic in general), that Neoplatonism is a better description than Hermeticism, and that, rather than being reborn in the Renaissance, theurgy and Christian Platonism had medieval roots. In particular, they suggest that the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus had a major influence on Western Christianity (discussed below).[2] It is their thought that I will argue corresponds remarkably well with Joseph Smith’s.

These reevaluations help to flesh out Brooke’s Hermeticism thesis by providing a larger context for early Mormonism and the sources upon which it drew. Using the Neoplatonic lens sheds light on numerous debates in Mormon historiography. 1) The Smiths’ involvement in what has been termed “folk magic” has led to considerable discussion of the relation between these folk practices and early Mormonism. If scholars refrain from reifying the concept of magic, they can focus on the worldview those practices suggest and observe the way certain rites paralleled Neoplatonism.[3] 2) Smith’s politics and utopianism stood out in various respects from those of his contemporaries. Those differences, I will argue, echoed Platonic themes. 3) Smith’s marital practices (polygamy) have received considerable attention. I argue that Smith essentially combined two Platonic motifs that had persisted in Western culture: Aristophanes’s myth of the adrogyne from Plato’s Symposium, where severed males and females seek wholeness by finding their severed half, and Socrates’s shared-wives from Plato’s Republic.[4] Smith’s goal, I argue, was to create a “nucleus of heaven” of his closest friends.[5] 4) Scholars have been puzzled by Mormonism in part because it is hard to see how the disparate innovations fit together. Ultimately, Neoplatonism provides a unifying framework that ties together many of Smith’s seemingly disparate innovations.

This dissertation will interpret Mormonism in light of the long tradition of Christian Platonism, in which Plato was viewed either as an important precursor to Christianity, or one who had tapped into legitimate sources of divine wisdom and thus was able to express Christian truth. Rather than something foreign to Christianity, Plato was influential from the beginning and found adherents throughout the history of Christianity. Platonism was not static; the Neoplatonists, in particular, made important additions to the movement. Imablichus and Proclus, added theurgy (Egyptian and other rituals that led to the divinization of the adherent) to Platonic practice and had significant influence on the development of Christian Platonism. Mormonism itself most resembled the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus and the various traditions they influenced. At the same time, Smith was heavily influenced by the traditional folk Christianity of the early United States, which also shaped the Neoplatonic-sounding aspects of his theology, but which, I will argue, preserved features of Neoplatonic practice in attenuated forms. These fuller aspects of Neoplatonism must be considered in exploring Smith’s religiosity.

The irony is that Smith never mentioned Plato, and the only reference to Plato among early Mormons that I am aware of was negative.[6] Smith never saw himself as an adherent of Plato, nor did he ever study Platonic or Neoplatonic ideas in a systematic way; Smith continually asserted that his theology was fundamentally biblical. However, I argue that Smith consistently pieced together Neoplatonic-sounding ideas and interpreted the Bible in Neoplatonic-sounding ways. Catherine Albanese’s assessment that Smith “picked up the scattered pieces of light in his world in order to repair and reconstruct a Hermetic whole” is apt (with the caveat that “Neoplatonic” is a better word choice).[7] Yet how Smith pieced together these Neoplatonic ideas is often quite unclear. Brooke suggested the possibilities of “revelation, Jungian archetypes, or simple reinvention,” all of which should be considered.[8] Smith saw himself as a prophet, a person that talked to God, and he produced extensive writings that he claimed were God’s word. Yet Smith did not present himself as wholly passive in expounding God’s word: Smith’s revelations were often answers to his questions and his revelations often directed Smith and his followers to study the various goings on in their world.[9] So even in Smith’s mind, it is possible that study was not incompatible with revelation.

I will argue that Smith was indeed able to study or at least absorb and integrate many of these Neoplatonic “pieces of light” because they were disseminated throughout Western religious thought and practice and were actually available to those, such as Smith, who were drawn to them. Why Smith was drawn to Neoplatonic ideas is harder to say. One reason was likely a reaction against the disenchantment asserted by the Reformation and the Enlightenment. Smith’s scriptures spoke out strongly against the cessation of miracles, and Neoplatonism presented a very enchanted worldview.[10] One way or another, Smith consistently was drawn to and expounded Neoplatonic ideas even though he did not view himself in those terms.

Method and Scope: I will make comparisons between the thought and practice of Joseph Smith and that of Plato and the Neoplatonists. Thus I will trace the development of Smith’s thought, making comparisons to Neoplatonism as I go, while noting possible points of contact between Smith and Neoplatonic ideas. The scope of the dissertation is very large, tracing ideas from Plato to Joseph Smith. The comparisons I will make will be based on primary sources but I will rely on many secondary sources when I talk about transmission. This dissertation will not attempt a complete analysis of Smith’s theology and practice but will instead focus on key areas with Neoplatonic similarities. I will argue, however, that the overlap between early Mormonism and Neoplatonism is extensive.

___________
[1]John L. Brooke, Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvi.

[2]Wouter J. Hanegraaff “The Study of Western Esotericism: New Approaches to Christian and Secular Culture,” in New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Vol 1: Regional, Critical, and Historical Approaches, ed. Peter Antes, Armin W. Geerts, and Randi Warne (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 489-520; Gyorgy E. Szonyi, John Dee’s Occultism: Magical Exaltation through Powerful Signs (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004); Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, forward by Jan Assmann , trans by David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007); Owen Davies, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Stephen Clucas, “John Dee’s Angelic Conversations and the Ars Notoria: Renaissance Magic and Medieval Theurgy,” in John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies In English Renaissance Thought, ed. Stephen Clucas, (Springer Dordrecht, The Netherlands: 2010), 231-74.

[3] Naomi Janowitz, Magic in the Roman World: Pagans, Jews and Christians (London: Routledge, 2001); Randall Styers, Making Magic: Religion, Magic, and Science in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Hanegraaff “The Study of Western Esotericism,” 489-520.

[4] Plato, Symposium, 190-193; Plato, Republic, 457-462. Cathy Gutierrez argues that certain Spiritualists also mixed Aristophanes from the Symposium with the Republic, “Deadly Dates: Bodies and Sex in Spiritualist Heavens,” in Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Haanegraaff and Jeffrey J. Krippal (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 326-29.

[5] Early Mormon Benjamin F. Johnson said, “The Prophet taught us that Dominion & powr in the great future,” said Benjamin Johnson, “would be Comensurate with the no [number] of ‘Wives Childin & Friends’ that we inheret here and that our great mission to earth was to Organize a Neculi [nucleus] of Heaven to take with us.” Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature, 1997), 10.

[6] Mormon apostle Parley Pratt attacked Plato for his notion of an immaterial afterlife. Quoted in Benjamin E. Park “Salvation through a Tabernacle: Joseph Smith, Parley P. Pratt, and Early Mormon Theologies of Embodiment,” Dialogue: Journal of Mormon Thought 43, no. 2 (2010):1-2. This issue is discussed below.

[7] Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 139.

[8] Brooke, Refiner’s Fire, xvi.

[9] One revelation ends with the injunction, “Verily I say unto you, that it is my will that you should hasten to translate my scriptures, and to obtain a knowledge of history, and of countries, and of kingdoms, of laws of God and man, and all this for the salvation of Zion. Amen.” Doctrine and Covenants 93:53.

[10] The Book of Mormon declares, “Who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hand of the apostles. And if there were miracles wrought then, why had God ceased to be a God of miracles?” And later, “If these things have ceased wo be under the children of men, for it is because of unbelief and all is vain.” Mormon 9:18-20; Moroni 7:37. Emma Clarke argues that the supernatural was central to Imablichus’s agenda. Iamblichus’ Mysteriis: A Manifesto of the Miraculous (Aldershot: U.K. Ashgate, 2001).

Phillip Jacob Spener, the father of Pietism, was accused by Lutheran ministers of being fundamentally Platonic in his theology and therefore a heretic. Spener “defended himself in print against these attacks,” says Florian Ebeling, “maintaining that he had built his doctrine exclusively on the basis of the Bible. And since there were incontestable parallels between his concepts and those of Plato, he reckoned that Plato had also read the Holy Scriptures.” [2]

Spener went farther by arguing that Abraham was the source of the ancient wisdom and that this wisdom passed into Egypt via Joseph “who was sent to Egypt by God … bearing the secret wisdom, or the believing spirit of Abraham.” The Egyptians attempted to copy Joseph’s wisdom but corrupted it and “spread false doctrine in its place.” Egypt thus “fell into the most shameful idolatry and blindness … and built temples to the most loathsome creatures … and founded a special, idolatrous cult for them.” [3]

Sound familiar? “Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah, through Ham, therefore my father was led away by their idolatry.” (1:27).

With this context in mind, let’s now think about the context of the Breathings of Hor and its parallels with Mormon theology and the Endowment ritual. Let me quote Algis Uzdavinys for context. “This transition may be imagined as a ceremonial movement through temple gates and halls which the initiate must cross in order to reach the place of justification, in the innermost part of the temple, where Osiris sits enthroned.” Uzdavinys then quotes Jan Assman (the leading expert on ancient Egyptian religion) “The path of the deceased to Osiris corresponds to the path of the priest on this way to the innermost sanctuary of the god. The path of the priest is furthermore sacramentally explained as an ascent to the heavens.” [4]

Since the text spoke of Egyptian (i.e. “pagan”) rituals and theology, perhaps there was some utility to having a text that declared Abraham to be the source of Egyptian wisdom, an idea with which some of Smith’s followers might have been familiar. “And the Lord said unto me: Abraham, I show these things unto thee before ye go into Egypt, that ye may declare all these words.” (3:15). Having Abraham sitting on Pharaoh’s throne teaching the Egyptians would have driven the point home further.

The BoA also makes the point that the Egyptians were not all bad, despite their idolatry (worshipping the wrong gods). “Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth, and with the blessings of wisdom, but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood.” (1:26) The Egyptians, argued Spener, maintained aspects of the ancient wisdom but claimed that Hermes was the author instead of Joseph. It was from this source that Plato drew his wisdom. [5] They weren’t quite doing it right, but were pretty close.

___________________
[1] D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 1.

[2] Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, forward by Jan Assmann, trans. by David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007), 111.

[3] Ibid, 112.

[4] Algis Uzdavinys, Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity (San Rafel, Calif.: Sophia Perennis, 2010), 45.

[5] Ebeling, Secret History of Hermes, 112.

So I was particularly intrigued when I came across Algis Uzadavinys’s Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity, which argues that the theology behind theurgy was fundamentally based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead.[3] Uzdavinys argues in a nutshell that Egyptian theology was one of pre-mortal souls coming to earth, overcoming sin and then ascending back to the gods after death, to become gods themselves. Uzdavinys argues that Plato took these concepts and “philosophized” them, replacing the Egyptian gods with terms like “the good” and “the forms.”[4] Iamblichus, argues Uzandavinys, after extensive study in Egypt, brought the gods back to Platonism with theurgy. So if Uzandavinys and I are correct, (why not?) then when Smith acquired the Breathings of Hor, he acquired a sort of Ur text behind the whole operation.

Reading the Breathings of Hor thus was quite an experience. It’s description of the departed soul undergoing ritual purification and then progressing back to the gods and becoming deified himself sounded quite familiar both in terms of Mormon and Neoplatonic theology. Here’s paragraph 5: “You shall not be turned away from the doors of the Underworld. Thoth, the Thrice Greatest, Lord of Hermopolis, has come to you. He has written for you a Breathing Document with his own fingers, so that your ba-spirit may breathe forever, and that you might regain the form that you had on earth among the living, since you are divine together with the ba-spirits of the gods. Your heart is the heart of Re; your flesh is the flesh of the great god.” [5].

Most interesting is how Ritner interprets facsimile 3. Instead of Abraham lecturing on astronomy, it’s actually the initiate entering the presence of Osiris sitting on his throne. “Having attained justification,” explains Ritner “the deified Hor is brought by Maat and Anubis before the altar of the enthroned Osiris, behind whom stands Isis.”[6] Cool, totally looks like the temple, go take a look. That is, after undergoing ritual purification and various stages of progression, Hor is led into the presence of Osiris. They’re even wearing ritual-looking aprons. In sum, Ritner declares, “The text is a formal document or ‘permit’ created by Isis and copied by Thoth to assure that the deified Hor regains the ability to breathe and function after death, with full mobility, access to offerings, and all other privileges of the immortal gods. The implications, basic symbolism, and intent of the text are certain.” [7] Ironically, Ritner’s translation looks considerably more “Mormon” than does Joseph Smith’s “translation.”

It’s curious that it took Joseph Smith so long to translate the Book of Abraham (1835-1842) particularly in comparison to how fast he translated the Book of Mormon and the Bible. But what is interesting is the degree to which Smith’s theology aligned with this “Book of the Dead” and late Neoplatonic philosophy in the interim: pre-existence, material God, deification, and ritual enactment of the whole process. The text demands, “Hide it! Hide it! Do not let anyone read it!” The fact that Smith was rather secretive about his own mystery rite… perhaps Smith learned more from the Breathings of Hor than is contained in what he published as the Book of Abraham.[8]

Indeed, this all reminds me of how Sam Brown describes Smith’s translations in his upcoming book. Smith was “translating” all the time, seeing with spiritual eyes what was really supposed to be. Exact, literal translations of ancient texts may not have been the point us such “translation.”[9]

______________
[1] Robert K. Ritner, “The Breathing of Hor among the Joseph Smith Papyri,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52, no. 3 (2003): 161-180. Ritner is quite critical of Joseph Smith, Hugh Nibley, and John Gee in this article. Apparently there’s been quite a nasty debate over these issues. I confess I’ve read none of it. Indeed I’ve only read one small article by Nibley, his response to Lester Bush–I’ve read nothing by Nibley on these topics.

[2] The actual title of the text is “the Reply of Master Abamon to the the Letter of Prophyry to Anebo, and the Solutions to the Questions it Contains.” Ficino, the text’s Latin translator entitled it De Mysteriis, On the Mysteries.

[3] Algis Uzandavinys, Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity (San Rafel, Calif.: Sophia Perennis, 2010). Sophia Perennis isn’t exactly a university press but the book’s foreword is by John Finnamore an important Neoplatonist scholar and the book is endorsed on the back by John Dillon, probably the leading expert on Neoplatonism. Says Dillon, “In this most stimulating and wide-ranging work, Algis Uzandavinys, drawing on the resources of his enormous learning, leads Neoplatonic theurgy back to its roots in Ancient Egypt, thereby setting Platonic philosophy in a new and wider context. Students of Neoplatonism will find themselves much indebted to him for this, and all readers will find their outlook on life significantly changed.” Quite the endorsement. I haven’t finished the book yet but wanted to put this post up anyway. Perhaps more when I’m done.

[4] Christian Platonists long asserted that the “ancient wisdom” came to Plato from the Egyptians and to the Egyptians from Moses, Joseph, or Abraham.

[5] Ritner, 172.

[6] Ritner, 175.

[7] Ritner, 177.

[8] This is not to say that Smith did not interact with these elements from other sources in his environment. It looks to me like Smith put gathered these elements and arranged them in a particular fashion.

[9] This is not to say that the text of the Book of Abraham isn’t worthwhile. It’s full of interesting stuff. I’ll have some more posts on some interesting things about that text later.

Theodorus: Socrates, if your words convinced everyone as they do me, there would be more peace and less evil on earth.

Socrates: But is it not possible, Theodorus, that evil should be destroyed—for there must always be something opposed to good; nor it is possible that it should have its seat in heaven. But it must inevitably haunt human life, and prowl about this earth. That is why a man should make all haste to escape from earth to heaven; and escape means becoming as like God as possible; and a man becomes like God when he becomes just and pure, with understanding….

Let us try to put the truth in this way, in God there is no sort of wrong whatsoever; he is supremely just, and the thing most like him is the man who has become just as it lies in human nature to be. [2]

Not surprisingly, Clement, the Christian Platonist, asserted most strongly that the purpose of Christianity was to become a god.

The second quote comes from the Symposium, which I find rather lovely. Here Aristophanes tells the myth of the Androgyn, that humans were once male and female fused into one being. These androgyns were very powerful and sought to attack the gods, so the gods split them in two. I put the particularly important part in bold.

Now, since their natural form had been cut in two, each one longed for its own half, and so they would throw their arms about each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to grow together….

This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature….

And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own … then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment.

These are the people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another. No one would think it is the intimacy of sex–that mere sex is the reason each lover takes so great and deep joy in being with the other. It’s obvious that the soul of each lover longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides behind a riddle. Suppose two lovers are lying together and Hephaestus stands over them with his mending tools, asking “What is it you human beings really want from each other?” And suppose they were perplexed, and he asks them again: “Is this your hearts desire, then–for the two of you to become parts of the same whole, as near as can be, and never to separate, day or night? Because if that’s your desire, I’d like to weld you together and join you into something that is naturally whole, so that the two of you are made into one. Then the two of you would share one life, as long as you live, because you would be one being, and by the same token, when you died, you would be one and not two in Hades, [3] having died a single death. Look at your love, and see if this is what you desire: wouldn’t this be all the good fortune you could want?

Surely you can see that no one who received such an offer would turn it down; no one would find anything else that he wanted. Instead, everyone would think he’d found out at last what he had always wanted: to come together and melt together with the one he loves, so that one person emerged from two. Why should this be? It’s because, as I said, we used to be complete wholes in our original nature, and now “Love” is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete. [4]

That quite reminds me of what we taught people on my mission. Again, such passages suggest that from a Latter-day Saint point of view, Clement of Alexandria had it right.
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[1] Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times, forward by Jan Assmann trans by David Lorton (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007), 39-40.

[2] Plato, Theaetetus, 176 a-c.

[3] Hades meaning the afterlife.

[4] Plato, Symposium, 190-193. Clement is also the Father that spoke most highly of marriage.