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Book Reviews, Abstracts, Enoch Material at Academy for Temple Studies

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I want to draw your attention to great new temple-related material which has been posted at the Academy for Temple Studies website at TempleStudies.org.

These are great new resources for any student of temple studies to increase in learning.  You can also subscribe by email to the Academy for Temple Studies, to get updates as soon as they’re posted.

Temple Studies Bibliography Now Online

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One of the presentations at the conference “Mormonism and the Temple” in Logan last month was by Danel W. Bachman, who presented the culmination of a project that he has been working on for the past six years.  It is the compilation of a very extensive bibliography on temple studies.  Other temple bibliographies have been published in the past (which are listed at the beginning of this compilation), and this bibliography sought to build on those while adding many more references to materials related to the temple.  As a result, this draft contains roughly 7,000 entries that pertain to temple studies.  And it is now online, at the Academy for Temple Studies website.

This is a great new project that will help researchers, scholars, students, and followers of temple studies find more resources on the subject, and related topics.  As you might imagine, this is a living project, and references will be added and pruned over time.  There will also be investigation into new bibliography technologies that might be utilized to better format, distribute, collaborate on, cite, and otherwise use the information.  All of these efforts will significantly aid scholarship in the field of temple studies.

See the new temple studies bibliography online.

The Doctrine of Exaltation, Godhood or Deification

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Some criticize the Church because of one doctrine we hold most dear, which is exaltation.  This has also been referred to at different times and places as godhood, deification, divinization, taking upon the divine nature, making divine, or theosis (also theiosis, theopoiesis, theōsis; from the Greek Θέωσις).  It is, in its most basic description, that man may become like God.  Many of our fellow Christians see this as the ultimate blasphemy and heresy.  How could man ever become like God?  Why would he want to do so?  Doesn’t this go against everything God has taught through his holy word?  The reality is that this concept has been a fundamental part of Christian thought since early Christianity, found throughout the Bible and in early Christian writings.  Unfortunately, this Christian teaching has been largely lost over the ages.

God restored the doctrine of exaltation through the Prophet Joseph Smith, as part of the restoration of the church of Jesus Christ.  Some have thought that Joseph’s teaching of this concept was a rather late invention of the prophet, near the end of his life.  However, the doctrine can be found even in the Book of Mormon, which was published before the church was formally organized.

I recently came across two great articles that were published that discuss this topic.

  • Daniel C. Peterson, “Defending the Faith: Exaltation isn’t a new doctrine,” Deseret News, 8 November 2012.  Peterson shows in this article how the doctrine of exaltation, or theosis, was not a late revelation in the restoration of the Church, but is found throughout the teachings of Joseph Smith.
  • Elder Tad R. Callister, Presidency of the Seventy, “Our Identity and Our Destiny,” BYU Devotional Address, Campus Education Week, 14 August 2012.  Elder Callister fantastically presents five witnesses of the truth of the doctrine of deification: the testimony of the scriptures, the witness of the early Christian writers, the wisdom of poets and authors, the power of logic, and the voice of history.

I highly recommend these two articles.  If you want even further in-depth study, then I also suggest William J. Hamblin’s excellent recent publication in the Interpreter journal, “‘I Have Revealed Your Name’: The Hidden Temple in John 17,” where Hamblin discusses the chapter of John 17 in fine detail, revealing the strong temple concepts embedded in the text, including theosis.  He also includes an appendix with a bibliography of twenty-three recent scholars’ books on the subject of deification, published just in the last decade, all of them Christian, that you may dive into to learn more about this very Christian teaching.

The Temple in the Book of Mormon

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King Benjamin's Farewell Address - Minerva Teichert, 1935

Robert F. Smith has posted a good bibliography of studies on the temple in the Book of Mormon, which William Hamblin also posted.  I thought I’d do the same, with direct links to the works (some even available for reading online).  Many still believe that the Book of Mormon does not contain much of the temple in it, so this a good summary of some of the best reading on the subject:

Baker, LeGrand L.,, and Stephen D. Ricks, Who Shall Ascend Into the Hill of the Lord? The Psalms in Israel’s Temple Worship In the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon (SLC: Eborn Books, 2010).

Bokovoy, David, “Temple Imagery in the Book of Mormon,” 4-part BYU Education Week lectures for 2011, summarized on MDDB.

Butler, D. John, Plain and Precious Things: The Temple Religion of the Book of Mormon’s Visionary Men (Amazon/Kindle eBook, 2012).

Christensen, Kevin, “The Temple, the Monarchy, and Wisdom: Lehi’s World and the Scholarship of Margaret Barker,” in Seely, Seely, and Welch, eds., Glimpses of Lehi’s Jerusalem (Covenant Communications, 2004), 449-522.

Parry, Donald W., “Service and Temple in King Benjamin’s Speech,” JBMS, 16/2 (2007), 42-47.

Ricks, Stephen D., “The Treaty/Covenant Pattern in King Benjamin’s Address (Mosiah 1- 6).” BYU Studies, 24/2 (Spring 1984), 151-162

Spencer, Joseph M., An Other Testament: On Typology (Salem: Salt Press, 2012).

Valletta, Thomas R., “Conflicting Orders: Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah,” in D. Parry and S. Ricks, eds., The Temple in Time and Eternity (Provo: FARMS, 1999), 183-231.

Welch, John W., The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (SLC: Deseret, 1990).  FARMS put out an expanded ed.

Welch, John W., Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (Provo: FARMS, 1999).

Welch, John W., The Sermon on the Mount in Light of the Temple, SOTS (Ashgate, 2009).  By implication.

Updates about Hugh Nibley’s Centennial Commemoration

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Dr. Hugh Nibley lecturing

As I posted a few months ago, the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), in conjunction with Religious Education and the Harold B. Lee library, presented a weekly lecture series during the Winter Semester 2010 in honor of the 100th anniversary of Hugh Nibley’s birth, who was born on March 27, 1910.

The lecture series concluded on April 8th.  I was able to attend some of the presentations, and they were very well done.  I’m grateful to be able to get to know better the man, scholar, and saint, Hugh Nibley, and what he taught.

The Neal A. Maxwell Institute has reported that video of the lecture series presentations will be made available soon, likely on the Neal A. Maxwell website.

Transcripts of two of the lectures have already been made available:

The Institute also reports that an updated bibliography of Hugh Nibley’s works has been made available.

An article by Hugh Nibley has also been made available that has not been published in The Collected Works called “Beyond Politics.”  The talk was given on October 26, 1973 to the Pi Sigma Alpha honor society in the Political Science Department at BYU. It first appeared in BYU Studies 15/1 (1974): 3–28; and was reprinted in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless.

I’m still curious if these articles available here are still unpublished elsewhere in The Collected Works.  If anyone knows, I’d be interested to find out if they have been published or will be published.