Practices

“The Cosmic Ring-Dance of the Angels” by Frederick M. Huchel

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Detail from "The Last Judgment" by Fra Angelico - "The Dance of the Angels"

Detail from "The Last Judgment," c1425, by Fra Angelico - "The Dance of the Angels"

Some of you may remember my paper The Genesis of the Round Dance that I posted early in the life of TempleStudy.com.  It was a paper I wrote for a BYU Dance Department Symposium a few years ago that addressed the ancient ubiquitous practice of ring dancing, particularly as connected with religious worship and prayer.  It was a subject that really intrigued me, and is probably one of the most researched topics I’ve ever written about, as well as one of the first, taking some precious leads from Hugh Nibley and running.

Br. Frederick M. Huchel, an independent historian and scholar of the temple from Logan, Utah,  a week and a half ago spoke on the same subject at Margaret Barker’s Temple Studies Group symposium in London, England.  His presentation was entitled “The Cosmic Ring-Dance of the Angels: An Early Christian Rite of the Temple.”  The paper has now been published on David Larsen’s Heavenly Ascents blog.

I have not yet had the chance to read the paper, but I am confident that it will go far and above the detail of my paper, lending valuable insights particularly in the area of the ancient Israelite and early Christian elements.  Br. Huchel’s original work on the subject spans over 100 pages that he plans to publish at some point, of which this paper is a portion.

I’m really looking forward to learning more about this subject from Br. Huchel!  You can find the paper at the links below:

Introduction by Br. Huchel at Heavenly Ascents
PDF of “The Cosmic Ring-Dance of the Angels: An Early Christian Rite of the Temple”

Update: Frederick M. Huchel has now published a book on this subject.  You can buy it here: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-cosmic-ring-dance-of-the-angels—softbound/7409216?fNo=Cancel

Did the Temple Ordinances Come From The Masons?

Dr. Hugh Nibley lecturingToday a commenter on the site mentioned how I should include more parallels with the practices of the Masons, since that is plainly where the temple ordinances came from. And I would respond, did they? Did they really, so easily, come from the Masons? Can we dismiss Joseph as a prophet, seer, and revelator as simply as that?

I am reminded of a quote by our eloquent Dr. Nibley:

Off-hand, one may say that Joseph Smith could have gotten his ideas from any or many of a great number of sources, ancient and modern. Here is an illustration. On Easter Day in 1954 at about noon, the writer was standing with Brother Virgil Bushman, that doughty missionary to the Hopis, before the house of the celebrated Tewaquetewa in Old Oraibi, when a small delegation of leading men from the village came up and informed us that they had just learned from the local Protestant missionaries how the Mormons got a lot of their stuff. It seems that when the famous chief Tuba became a Mormon, Jacob Hamblin took him to Salt Lake City to marry his wives in the temple there. While the chief was in town, Joseph Smith, none other, got him aside and interrogated him very closely, prying the tribal secrets out of him; from what Chief Tuba told Smith, he proceeded to write the Book of Mormon, establish the temple ordinances, and found the Church. And that, sir, is why the Hopi traditions are so much like the Mormon.

The point is, that would be quite a plausible explanation had the two men been contemporary, or had either ever been in Salt Lake; Joseph Smith just might have gotten his knowledge that way. There are in fact countless tribes, sects, societies, and orders from which he might have picked up this and that, had he known of their existence. The Near East in particular is littered with the archaeological and living survivals of practices and teachings which an observant Mormon may find suggestively familiar. The Druzes would have been a goldmine for Smith. He has actually been charged with plundering some of the baggage brought to the West by certain fraternal orders during the Middle Ages-as if the Prophet must rummage in a magpie’s nest to stock a king’s treasury! There are countless parallels, many of them very instructive, among the customs and religious of mankind, to what the Mormons do. But there is a world of difference between Ginzberg’s Legends of the Jews and the book of Isaiah, or between the Infancy Gospels and the real Gospels, no matter how many points of contact one may detect between them. The LDS endowment was not built up of elements brought together by chance, custom, or long research; it is a single, perfectly consistent organic whole, conveying its message without the aid of rationalizing, spiritualizing, allegorizing, or moralizing interpretations. ((The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, intro))

Instead of making Joseph out as someone he clearly was not (a one-of-a-kind religious scholar of the most keen intellect and a knowledge a good two hundred years ahead of his time), it makes much more sense to me that he was actually a prophet of God who received the ordinances of the temple in the same way the ancients did, by revelation from God.

The Pope Receives a New Name

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Pope Benedict XVIThere is an established practice throughout history and in many areas of the world when someone is elevated to royal, or otherwise elevated status and position — they are given a new name. This name is often referred to as a regnal name, or a reign name, and is different than the given name at birth. This practice is particularly well known in the Roman Catholic Church, where the Pope, upon being elected to his position, is called upon to give himself a new name. This process goes something like this: [Read more…]

What Good are the Scattered Fragments?

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Hugh Nibley

Hugh Nibley

Since the first day I picked up a book by Hugh Nibley I have been fascinated by the parallels which he taught exist between our practices and those of the ancients.  Many critics of the Church claim that Joseph Smith made this all up, that he was a charlatan, a deceiver, and a con-man.  However, making that broad claim that Joseph invented it all from his fantastic mind (for even our critics offer him that), or that he plundered the practices from others, still fails to explain why parts and pieces of the gospel structure are to be found scattered around all the world in almost every time, place, and culture.

But what good does it do us in studying the ancient practices?  Why is it so interesting and pertinent to our modern-day Church?  Why does looking back help us look forward?  Nibley gave a good explanation:

Latter-day Saints believe that their temple ordinances are as old as the human race and represent a primordial revealed religion that has passed through alternate phases of apostasy and restoration which have left the world littered with the scattered fragments of the original structure, some more and some less recognizable, but all badly damaged and out of proper context. . . .

Among the customs and religions of mankind there are countless parallels, many of them very instructive, to what the Mormons do. . . . But what about the Egyptian rites? What are they to us? They are a parody, an imitation, but, as such, not to be despised. For all the great age and consistency of their rites and teachings, which certainly command respect, the Egyptians did not have the real thing, and they knew it. . . . in the words of Abraham, “Pharaoh, being a righteous man,” was ever “seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign” (Abraham 1:26), for he “would fain claim [the priesthood]” (Abraham 1:27). If the Egyptian endowment was but an imitation, it was still a good one, and we may be able to learn much from it, just as we may learn much about the early church from the vagaries of the gnostics. But it is not for a moment to be equated with the true and celestial order of things. . . . What these few bits of added information do is to supply a new dimension to . . . [our temple] experience, along with the assurance that a wealth of newly found records confirms the fundamental thesis of its antiquity and genuineness. (Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri, xxvii-xxix)