immortality

Death Before the Fall? First Impressions

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Omo 1 skull remains, considered the oldest Homo sapiens fossils discovered, scientists date to 200,000 years old

Omo 1 skull remains, considered the oldest Homo sapiens fossils discovered, scientists date to 200,000 years old

This is a follow-up to “The Age of the Earth” post, although I suppose that one was really laying the groundwork for this one.  This is where everything comes to a head (like the one shown here).  Was there death before the Fall of Adam and Eve?  It is a very delicate question, because there are very strong feelings on many sides of the issue, some of which may have tremendous gospel implications as well.  So here we will tread lightly, and attempt to not make any dogmatic conclusions.  I’m not sure I have any besides.  These are simply some first impressions on the subject.  Because that is the case, we will ask more questions here than we attempt to answer in any substantial way.

This is a point of presumed doctrine in LDS belief that causes consternation for many members.  Similar to the age of the Earth question, it causes cognitive dissonance for some, insofar that some even lose their faith in the Church, and even leave the Church.  I perceive that this should not be.  There are answers, even if preliminary, to most of these difficult questions.  It should also be noted that questions such as these are not necessarily central to the gospel, nor to our salvation, but they do affect some people’s ability to function in the Church because of the cognitive dissonance it causes them.

The belief, as I introduced above, is that there was no death before the Fall of Adam and Eve.  No death, period.  On the other hand, the world and its legions of scientists of all stripes inform us that there were dinosaurs, dating back 230 million years, with bones scattered in all parts of the world (one of the largest caches is located right here in Vernal, Utah).  There were trilobites, perhaps the most common fossil, dating back 526 million years (again, one of the richest quarries is just west of Delta, Utah, where you can actually “farm” for trilobites to take home.)  There were ancient forests, plant life, zooplankton, and algae, dating back millions of year, which helped give us the crude oil that powers much of our world today.  There are even bones of hominids that used stone tools that most scientists concur died a couple million years ago.  Indeed, there are even bones of anatomically modern humans that have been dated to up to 200,000 years old (see the image above). [Read more…]

The Apotheosis of Washington

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The Apotheosis of Washington (detail), Constantino Brumidi, 1865, United States Capitol Building rotunda.

The Apotheosis of Washington (detail), Constantino Brumidi, 1865, United States Capitol Building rotunda.

I watched an interesting show last night, Secret America on Discovery, and learned some interesting things.  One of them was that there is a large fresco painted on the inside of the dome of the rotunda of the United States Capitol Building.  It is called “The Apotheosis of Washington” and was painted by an Italian Painter, Constantino Brumidi, in 1865 for the sum of $40,000.

What is interesting is what was painted in this profound location.   [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 4

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Front Wall, Right Part, Tutankhamun's Burial Chamber - god Anubis, on left, leads Tutankhamun before goddess Hathor, on right, who gives the breath of life to King Tut through the nostrils with the ankh. The symbols of life, prosperity, time and eternity are directly over Tut's head.

(Continued from Part 3)

In the last parts of our series on the Egyptian hieroglyph of the ankh, and other related symbols, I’d like to look at where these symbols are found on the extant portions of the Joseph Smith Papyri, related documents, and the facsimiles of the Book of Abraham, to see if Joseph Smith was correct in any of his interpretations, or even on the right track.  I’ve written a brief into to these documents here.

As we’ve noted before, the themes that show up in the rituals of the Egyptians have unique parallels to our modern temple practices and ordinances.  This is not to be interpreted as an adoption of pagan rites, plagiarism of ancient rituals, or a belief in Egyptian polytheism, for the Egyptians had a corrupt imitation of the true order of God, and Joseph knew it.  Indeed, such attacks leveled at Joseph might actually be counterintuitive to our critics’ position, for such would mean that Joseph understood what he was looking at in the papyri, yet such inspired translation is precisely what our critics claim he could not do.  Note that the field of Egyptology had just recently been born in the 1820s, and the reading of hieroglyphics was only barely in its infancy in Europe at the time Joseph was translating the papyri in the 1830s, ruling out any scholarly approach to reading the papyri.  The critics have yet to explain, therefore, if Joseph did not receive the temple ordinances by revelation from God, and he could not read the papyri, then how did he teach temple rites that have remarkable parallels to the Egyptians which were written on the papyri?  Could he read the papyri or couldn’t he?  Either way our critics find themselves in a quandary.

Instead of being detrimental to Joseph, such a connection between the papyri and the temple actually serves as evidence of his divine calling, and that he was inspired to translate the papyri.  As in many instances of the early experiences of the prophet, Joseph had a question about something that he experienced in his life, and inquired of the Lord about it ((See the history behind the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood and baptism)).  What followed was a restoration, through revelation, of the true and perfect ordinance or teaching of that particular thing.  The papyri quite possibly were such a springboard for the restoration of the temple endowment, as H. Donl Peterson has noted:  [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 2

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(Continued from Part 1, which has been updated)

As I mentioned in Part 1, the more interesting aspects of the Egyptian ankh are not necessarily what it means standing alone, but how the Egyptians used it in their texts and illustrations.

There are three principal ways that the Egyptians used the ankh symbol, by itself, in their drawings:

  1. Detail from Papyrus of Ani - a god leads the initiate towards the throne (click for larger view)Probably the most common depiction of the ankh is being clutched in the hand by the gods and goddesses on the upper loop portion of the symbol.  Wikipedia notes:

    The ankh appears frequently in Egyptian tomb paintings and other art, often at the fingertips of a god or goddess in images that represent the deities of the afterlife conferring the gift of life on the dead person’s mummy… ((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh))

    In other words, the Egyptians believed that their gods “held” eternal life in their hands, and could bestow it upon certain persons at their pleasing.  Chevalier and Gheerbrant note:  [Read more…]

The Egyptian Ankh, “Life! Health! Strength!” – Part 1

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Detail of Hathor shrine at Hatshepsut's temple in Luxor, Egypt

Egypt figures a central role in the religion of the ancient Near East, where much of our canon of scripture owes its narrative and existence to this locale.  Even the Book of Mormon tells us it was written in “reformed Egyptian” (Mormon 9:32).  The most interesting aspect, to me, is the adoption into Egypt of traces of the rites and ordinances of the temple of God, and its priesthood.  Unfortunately, the ordinances were apostate forms, the priesthood invalid, and all was done in imitation of the true order:

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. (Abraham 1:26)

But even so, the fragments of the ordinances that are extant in artifacts and texts are very educational.  In Hugh Nibley’s classic work The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment he says:  [Read more…]