[Page 81]Abstract: This article examines Jacob’s statement “God hath taken away his plainness from [the Jews]” (Jacob 4:14) as one of several scriptural texts employing language that revolves around the Deuteronomic canon formulae (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32 [13:1]; cf. Revelation 22:18‒19). It further examines the textual dependency of Jacob 4:13‒14 on Nephi’s earlier writings, 1 Nephi 13 and 2 Nephi 25 in particular. The three texts in the Hebrew Bible that use the verb bʾr (Deuteronomy 1:5; 27:8; Habakkuk 2:2) — each having covenant and “law” implications — all shed light on what Nephi and Jacob may have meant when they described “plain” writing, “plain and precious things [words],” “words of plainness,” etc. Jacob’s use of Zenos’s allegory of the olive tree as a means of describing the Lord’s restoring or re-“adding” what had been “taken away,” including his use of Isaiah 11:11 (Jacob 6:2) as a hermeneutical lens for the entire allegory, further connects everything from Jacob 4:14 (“God hath taken away”) to Jacob 6:2 with the name “Joseph.” Genesis etiologizes the name Joseph in terms of divine “taking away” (ʾāsap) and “adding” (yōsēp; Genesis 30:23‒24; cf. Numbers 36:1‒5). God’s “tak[ing] away his plainness” involved both divine and human agency, but the restoration of his plainness required divine agency. For Latter-day Saints, it is significant the Lord accomplished this through a “Joseph.”

The biblical double-etiology for the patriarch Joseph’s name roots it in divine action. The etiology characterizes that divine action in terms of two antonymous verbs: “And she [Rachel] conceived, and bare a son; and said, God hath taken away [ʾāsap] my reproach: And she called his name Joseph [yôsēp]; and said, The Lord shall add [yōsēp] to me another son” (Genesis 30:23‒24). In other words, the Genesis text depicts Rachel [Page 82]naming her elder son, Joseph (“may he [God] add”), on the basis that “God ha[d] taken away” or “withdrawn” (< “gathered up”) the shame1 or stigma of her erstwhile childlessness through Joseph’s birth and her expressed wish that the Lord would “add” her another son in the future (“may the Lord add to me another son”). The latter explanation hints at the birth of Benjamin (binyāmîn “son of the right hand”) as that future “son” (bēn).

Another, later Pentateuchal text echoes the double-etiology of Genesis 30:23‒24 with direct wordplay on the name Joseph in terms of the antonymy of “adding” and “taking away.” Numbers 36 details a revelation given to Moses which intends to alleviate concerns about tribal inheritances being “impaired by the permission given to the daughters of Zelophehad to inherit from their father”2 (as detailed in Numbers 27). In other words, the heads of the tribe of Joseph worried that their inheritances would be “taken away” and “added to” the inheritances of other tribes:

And the chief fathers of the families of the children of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of the sons of Joseph [yôsēp], came near,

[Page 73]Abstract: In these glimpses of the early private life of a very public figure, Stephen E. Robinson provides a portrait that will enable readers to see how the child became father to the man.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Stephen E. Robinson, “John W. Welch: A Personal Reminiscence,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 1–8. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

John Woodland Welch (Jack) has been my friend and colleague for more than 65 years, since we attended the same Junior Sunday School and Primary in the old La Cañada Ward of the Glendale Stake in Los Angeles, California. Jack is a year older than I am so sometimes we were in the same church class or quorum, and sometimes not. My first distinct memory of Jack is from our Blazer class at Primary. I realized at a young age, what I would come to realize again and again many times since, that Jack already knew all about “stuff.” In that first case, it was all the Scout stuff, which had remained largely a mystery to me. Our Blazer leader, Paul Griffen, finally got me to learn the Scout Oath and a little more, but Jack almost a year earlier had memorized it all: the Oath, the Motto, the Law, and all the paragraphs in the Scout [Page 74]Handbook pertaining to each. It was a precedent to be repeated over and over again in my experience with Jack as we grew up.

Jack and I were blessed with remarkably good ward leaders and teachers. Our early morning Seminary teacher, Sister Elaine Walton, once said she expected our class to produce bishops, stake presidents, and even more. I remember as she finished her sentence that her eyes were resting on Jack. I also believe her feelings on that occasion have proved to be prophetic.

Under the tutelage of that greatest of all Scoutmasters, Cy Watson, Jack quickly became an Eagle Scout. I remember from our days at Cherry Valley and other Scout camps that Jack was a decent shot, but a superb swimmer. Also, I do not remember him ever having to “hold up trees” on any of our frequent Scout outings—a punishment sometimes meted out to the many ruffians among us. Finally, a few years later, Jack and I were blessed to attend a Sunday School class taught by a very young Richard Callister, brother to Elder Tad R. Callister of the Seventy. Those were glorious Sundays, even for us teenagers. Brother Callister’s grandfather, Elder LeGrand Richards, occasionally attended our ward and always addressed the congregation when he did. The deacons, teachers, and priests sat in the front of the chapel and were privileged to hear that grand old man preach the Gospel up close. All in all, I believe Jack’s adolescent experiences and training in the La Cañada Ward provided a “perfect storm” of influence and support to aid him in achieving his magnificent future accomplishments.

As a youth, I remember going to the beach with Jack and his family. I recall being hugely (though silently) impressed that the chatter in the back of the station wagon was about music and literature as much if not more than the usual teenage trivia and sibling bickering one might expect. I was often a guest at the Welch family swimming pool, either alone or with others in our ward. However,

[Page 53]Abstract: Many Book of Mormon students are aware that several locations along Lehi’s Trail through the Arabian Peninsula now have surprising and impressive evidence of plausibility, including the River Laman, Valley of Lemuel, Nahom, and Bountiful. One specific named location that has received much less attention is Shazer, a brief hunting stop mentioned in only two verses. After reviewing the potential etymology of the name, Warren Aston provides new information from discoveries made during field work in late 2019 at the prime candidate for the Valley of Lemuel, discoveries that lead to new understanding about the path to Shazer. Contrary to previous assumptions about Lehi’s journey, Aston shows there was no need to backtrack through the Valley of Lemuel to begin the “south-southeast” journey toward Shazer. It appears that Nephi’s description of crossing the river from the family’s campsite and then going south-southeast toward Shazer is exactly what can be done from the most likely candidate for a campsite in the most likely candidate for the Valley of Lemuel. In light of fieldwork and further information, Aston also reviews the merits of several locations that have been proposed for Shazer and points to a fully plausible, even probable, location for Shazer. The account of Shazer, like Nahom, the River of Laman/Valley of Lemuel, and Bountiful, may now be a fourth Arabian pillar anchoring and supporting the credibility of the Book of Mormon’s Old World account.

And it came to pass that we did take our tentsand depart into the wilderness, across the river Laman.And it came to pass that we traveled for the space of four days,nearly a south-southeast direction,[Page 54]and we did pitch our tents again;and we did call the name of the place Shazer.

And it came to pass that we did take our bows and our arrows,and go forth into the wilderness to slay food for our families;and after we had slain food for our familieswe did return again to our families in the wilderness,to the place of Shazer.

—1 Nephi 16:12-14

At first glance, the two verses in Nephi’s account that mention Shazer offer little expectation that this brief hunting stop might be located on the modern map at all, much less with any confidence. This essay reviews the likely etymology of the name before reporting new discoveries made in late 2019 at the prime candidate for the Valley of Lemuel, finds that ultimately form part of the story of Shazer. Several of the locations discussed have not been pictured previously in Latter-day Saint publications. After weighing the various locations proposed over the years, it concludes that recent explorations seem likely to have bridged the 2,600-year gap between Nephi’s day and our own, yielding a fully plausible, even probable location for Shazer.

Alongside the River of Laman/Valley of Lemuel, Nahom, and Bountiful, Shazer thus becomes the fourth Arabian pillar anchoring and supporting, in the real world, the credibility of the Book of Mormon’s Old World account.

The Etymology of the Name “Shazer”

Along with the other place names in the Lehite account, much attention has been given by commentators over the years into understanding what “Shazer” — a name bestowed by the Lehites upon their first camp after leaving the Valley of Lemuel — may signify. This essay contributes to that discussion by suggesting that the identification of the most plausible location for Shazer has strong implications for the suggestions made to date.

In 1952, while making no attempt at locating it, two scholars published quite different suggestions that have dominated discussions of the etymology of “Shazer” down to the present. The most enduring was the suggestion of Sidney B. Sperry that the name may derive from the Hebrew root š...

[Page 41]Abstract: This prefatory material to the festschrift for John W. Welch gives an overview of his exceptional life, full of variety and intensity. As James R. Rasband writes: “His candle burns bright whatever the project.” Hoskisson and Peterson characterize “Jack” as a “polymath” as they give a thumbnail sketch of the history of FARMS (Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies), which he founded and of the book which honors his numerous contributions. A final contribution to this installment provides a useful collection of highlights of his personal and professional life.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. This single article combines three items from the original book: the Foreword, Introduction, and Biographical Highlights. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), ix–xx. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]

ForewordJames R. Rasband

I am honored to pen the foreword to this Festschrift for John W. Welch (Jack). A few years ago, Jack received the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, the most prestigious academic [Page 42]recognition awarded by Brigham Young University (BYU). At the time, I was serving as the dean of the BYU Law School where I have been Jack’s colleague for the last 21 years. In that role, I was asked to assess whether his contributions had truly been “exceptional,” as the award criteria demands. To answer the question I hypothesized writing a history of the university and asking whether the work of a nominated faculty member would merit mention in the long history of the university. Most of us, I suggested, would be thrilled with a footnote but, in my view, Jack’s work could merit a whole chapter; it surely merits this Festschrift — celebratory ‘feast script’ — from the estimable colleagues whose work is assembled in this volume.

The story of Jack’s discovery of chiasmus in the Book of Mormon during his mission will likely be familiar to those who read this collection. I won’t repeat the story. Those who want the details can read Jack’s own reminiscence.1 What I’ve always loved about the story is that it’s pure Jack Welch, even at age 19. While most missionaries would have been eager to use their preparation day to explore the Bavarian Alps, Jack saw a poster for a New Testament class taught by the Regensburg Priests’ Seminary and decided that he and his junior companion would attend. The first lecture touched on chiasmus and mentioned a new book by a German scholar on the literary art in the Gospel of Matthew. On the way back to their apartment, Jack insisted on stopping at a religious bookstore, found the book, and records that he “could not put it down.”2 Imagine Jack’s missionary companion, wondering what was to become of P-days and how companion study was going to work. Jack’s extraordinary wife of 48 years, Jeannie Sutton Welch, surely needs no such imagination; she knows — and loves — the drive and focus.

As readers will recall, upon learning that chiasmus in the New Testament was evidence of Hebraic influence, Jack was prompted to look for it in the Book of Mormon.

[Page 1]Abstract: How does God relate to time? How do we? Modern science and revelation offer distinctive and fascinating perspectives to these questions. Specifically, the physical mechanisms underlying time have doctrinal parallels, they appear to be operative at the Fall, and they correlate with several phenomena that make God’s mercy possible.

Time is clearly not our natural dimension … Whereas the bird is at home in the air, we are clearly not at home in time — because we belong to eternity! Time, as much as any one thing, whispers to us that we are strangers here. – Elder Neal A. Maxwell1

People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. – Albert Einstein2

Questions about time arise as soon as you begin reading the standard works. From the very first sentence, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen 1:1), we may ask, what is this beginning? If it was the moment of this earth’s creation, how could the “evening and the morning” be called the “first day” if the bodies by which “days” are defined, wouldn’t even be organized for four days (see Moses 2:14–19)? If, instead, this beginning refers to the singular event of the Big Bang, [Page 2]which is presumed to have created not only the universe but time itself, can it have a cause? Can causality — and with it, law, rationality, truth, or freewill — exist apart from time? And if these did have a beginning, must they have an end?3

Should these questions be settled, deeper theological ones appear. Specifically, how does God relate to time? The traditional view sees him as “infinite and eternal, from everlasting to everlasting … unchangeable” (D&C 20:17); “self-existent”;4 and without even a “shadow of changing” (Mormon 9:9–10). His power is “without beginning of days or end of years” (D&C 84:17) and is dispensed according to his “foreknowledge of all things” (Alma 13:7–9). Yet almost in flat contradiction to this, we are told that God’s power is also wielded by faith,5 which Alma defines as “not to have a perfect knowledge of things” (Alma 32:21). Not only does this incompleteness require the temporalizing virtue of patience (see Ether 12:6), it lays bare the curious tension implied in God’s aim to “to bring to pass” our “eternal life,” as if constancy is founded on fundamental change (see Moses 1:39,

[Page vii]Abstract: We are often at the dubious mercy of people, forces, and events that are beyond our control. But a trust in Providence — a word that is used relatively seldom these days for power that transcends even those people, forces, and events and that can, in the end, overrule them for our good — can nonetheless give us serene confidence. That such providential power exists, that it is personal and caring, is one of the fundamental messages of the scriptures and the prophets.

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure: Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it. (Isaiah 46:10-11)

Notoriously, the imperial Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor caught the United States by surprise. America was grossly unprepared and entirely shocked.

On Sunday, 7 December 1941, the day of the attack, my father, having fled the poor employment prospects available during the Great Depression, was serving in the horse cavalry of the United States Army — yes, such a thing still existed — along California’s border with Mexico. Hearing the news from Hawaii, he made a journal entry that day for the first time in weeks. I don’t know why he was keeping a journal. He wasn’t a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at that time (nor for more than three decades thereafter), so it wasn’t a result of exhortations to write one’s personal history.

[Page viii]Camp Lockett, Calif.Sunday

Lots of excitement today. Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor — killed 350 soldiers at Hickman [sic] Field — lots of other damage etc. Our outfit is patrolling the Mexican border, machine guns have been set up at various points. All leaves, furloughs and passes cancelled until further notice. Just heard that Japan has officially declared war against the U.S. — No doubt as to what our answer will be — Hang on, boys, here we go.1

That entry has fascinated me since we first unexpectedly found the journal and read it, several years after my father’s passing. It’s not a retrospective look at the Second World War. It hadn’t been edited in the intervening years. It reads today as it was written then, from the perspective of someone caught in the rush of events as they unfolded.

Unlike us, now seventy-five years removed from Hitler’s death in his bunker in the Führerhauptquartiere in Berlin and the surrender of the Empire of Japan on the deck of the USS Missouri, Dad could not look back with calm, informed understanding at the Pearl Harbor attack. Did he realize that World War II had just begun? Perhaps; I don’t know. Certainly he didn’t know that he would end up experiencing the V-1 “buzz bomb” and V-2 rocket attacks on London, crossing the English Channel just after the Battle of the Bulge, serving in General George S. Patton’s Third Army, participating in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Mauthausen, Austria, and being demobilized, whole and in good health, from liberated Paris. He didn’t know that he and his brothers would survive. (Fortunately,

[Page 355]Abstract: Some critics of the Book of Mormon suppose that the DNA characteristics of modern Native Americans should be compatible with “Israelite” rather than with Asian genetics. The authors point out that while DNA is a valid tool to study ancient and modern populations, we must be careful about drawing absolute conclusions. They show that many of the conclusions of critics are based on unwarranted assumptions. There are specific limitations that cannot be ignored when using the available genetic data to infer conclusions regarding the DNA of Book of Mormon peoples. Such conclusions are not founded on solid science but are the interpretation of a few, as genetic data fails to produce conclusive proof weighing credibly in favor of or against the historicity of the Book of Mormon.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Ugo A. Perego and Jayne E. Ekins, “Is Decrypting the Genetic Legacy of America’s Indigenous Populations Key to the Historicity of the Book of Mormon?,” in Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of The Expound Symposium 14 May 2011, ed. Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 259–94. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ancient-temple-worship/.]

[Page 356]Background

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., Mormons or LDS) consider the Book of Mormon a volume of divine origin comparable in scriptural sacredness to the Bible (Article of Faith #8). They believe it to be an historical record originally engraved on golden plates, covering a period of approximately one thousand years (600 bc to 400 ad) and dealing with ancient people who lived in the American continent hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans. A small part of the Book of Mormon describes a different group of people of unknown Old World origin, called the Jaredites, disappearing (at least as a civilization) by the time the second group of migrants made their journey to the Western Hemisphere.

The main narrative of the Book of Mormon begins in Jerusalem with a family who escapes, by divine warning, the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians approximately six centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ. With a few others, they are eventually guided on a journey to a non-specified region of America’s double continent.1 The descendants of this small original group later divided into two opposing factions, called the Lamanites and the Nephites, and the rest of the volume focuses mainly on the spiritual and social dynamics between these two groups, including their warfare. The recurring theme of the Book of Mormon is the coming of the Savior Jesus Christ first to the Old World, as witnessed in the Bible, followed by a brief ministry after his resurrection to a group of disciples who received him in the Americas. The book itself does not claim to be a complete history of these people but rather an abridgment made by Mormon, one of the last prophets in charge of the records, after whom the whole volume was eventually named. Further, the explicit purpose of many of the contributors to the records compiled in the Book of Mormon was to focus on spiritual rather than historical matters regarding the doings of their people.

Honest seekers of truth are invited to receive a spiritual confirmation of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon...

[Page 307]Abstract: An article recently published in an online journal entitled “The Entheogenic Origins of Mormonism: A Working Hypothesis” posits that Joseph Smith used naturally occurring chemicals, called “entheogens,” to facilitate visionary experiences among his early followers. The entheogenic substances were reportedly derived from two mushrooms, a fungus, three plants (including one cactus), and the secretions from the parotid glands of the Sonoran Desert toad. Although it is an intriguing theory, the authors consistently fail to connect important dots regarding chemical and historical cause-and-effect issues. Documentation of entheogen acquisition and consumption by the early Saints is not provided, but consistently speculated. Equally, the visionary experiences recounted by early Latter-day Saints are highly dissimilar from the predictable psychedelic effects arising from entheogen ingestion. The likelihood that Joseph Smith would have condemned entheogenic influences as intoxication is unaddressed in the article.

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In 2019, retired emergency department physician Robert Beckstead, Naked Mormonism podcaster Bryce Blankenagel, independent researcher Cody Noconi, and retired Arizona State University Professor Michael Winkelman published “The Entheogenic Origins of Mormonism: A Working Hypothesis” in the online Journal of Psychedelic Studies.1 Their lengthy article, richly illustrated with 41 color figures and more than 300 references in the bibliography, attributes many of [Page 308]Joseph Smith’s visionary experiences and those of other early Latter-day Saints to the use of “entheogens,” or psychedelic chemical substances available in the environment.2 The authors state:

[N]o single explanation has to date successfully accounted for the number and quality of visions in early Mormonism. Nor can these modalities explain the “on-demand” visions that were neither spontaneous nor the result of prolonged austerities. To date, Joseph Smith’s and early Mormon converts’ visionary experience are neither easily defined nor understood. Against this background, we present compelling evidence suggesting that many early Mormon visionary experiences were facilitated by entheogenic substances. … We propose that the entheogenic context of early Mormon involved sacraments, ordinances, and endowments feeding these seekers’ hunger for primary religious experience. (212–13)

The primary thesis promoted throughout EOMWH assumes that “[h]erbs were a physical means to profound religious experience, experiences that rarely occur without using entheogens” (214).

All human experience and insight emerge in the chemistry of the brain. … To explore how brain chemistry was involved in Joseph Smith’s religious experiences and those of other early Mormon believers and whether entheogens facilitated those experiences is not to question the spiritual validity and power of those experiences but to illuminate how such compelling experiences were accessed then and draw implications for how they may be accessed now (213).

For support,

[Page 291]Abstract: Mark Alan Wright describes a common type of ritual specialist among the Maya called a “daykeeper.” He discusses similarities and differences with descriptions of ritual specialists in the Book of Mormon, including those who used the Urim and Thummim, performed rituals of healing, experienced near-death episodes at the inauguration of their calling, kept track of calendars, mastered astronomy, and invoked God to bring rain. He finds several intriguing similarities, but also differences — the most important one being that the Nephites understood that the power to do all these things came from the God of Israel rather than the local pantheon.

[Editor’s Note: Part of our book chapter reprint series, this article is reprinted here as a service to the LDS community. Original pagination and page numbers have necessarily changed, otherwise the reprint has the same content as the original.

See Mark Alan Wright, “Nephite Daykeepers: Ritual Specialists in Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon,” in Ancient Temple Worship: Proceedings of The Expound Symposium 14 May 2011, ed. Matthew B. Brown, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Stephen D. Ricks, and John S. Thompson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation; Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2014), 243–58. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ancient-temple-worship/.]

Contrary to popular belief, the Maya civilization did not mysteriously disappear in the distant past. In actuality, there are millions of Maya people alive and well today who reside in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize. There are 31 distinct living Mayan languages that continue to be spoken, and the people still maintain many of their ancient traditions. It is true that the Classic period Maya civilization collapsed around the tenth century ad, but rather than annihilation, that simply means that the top-heavy elite culture that commissioned monumental architecture and demanded heavy tribute from the lower classes was overthrown. It was at the time of collapse that the large civic centers were abandoned, and the people returned to farming their land without the burden of heavy tribute; the meek inherited the earth, as it were. Although the political system was overthrown, their fundamental religious ideology remained largely intact. Fortunately, thanks to elaborately carved stone monuments and intricately painted ceramics and murals, there is demonstrable and remarkable continuity in many of their religious beliefs and practices, some of which are evidenced as early as the Formative period — over 1,000 years before Christ — and continue among contemporary Maya cultures today. For 3,000 years they have maintained a core set of beliefs and practices.

An integral part of Maya religious practice was (and is) their reliance on ritual specialists, individuals who claim a special relationship with the divine realm and who are responsible for the physical and spiritual health of the people in their community. Mesoamerican anthropologists and archaeologists broadly refer to these ritual specialists as “shamans.” The Maya have indigenous terms for their ritual specialists, which vary according to which specific roles they play and which particular Maya group is under discussion.

A common type of ritual specialist among contemporary Maya groups is called a “daykeeper”; aj k’iin in the Yucatan or aj q’ij among the highland Quiche. One of the primary roles of the daykeepers is to keep track of the count of days; they are “calendar priests.” But “daykeepers” have also been described as “mediums,” “shaman-priests,” “priest-shamans,” “shaman-healers” or simply “healers.”1 Regardless of their specific t...

[Page 179]Abstract: This article highlights the striking resemblances between Moses 1 and a corresponding account from the Apocalypse of Abraham (ApAb), one of the earliest and most important Jewish texts describing heavenly ascent. Careful comparative analysis demonstrates a sustained sequence of detailed affinities in narrative structure that go beyond what Joseph Smith could have created out of whole cloth from his environment and his imagination. The article also highlights important implications for the study of the Book of Moses as a temple text. Previous studies have suggested that the story of Enoch found in the Pearl of Great Price might be understood as the culminating episode of a temple text woven throughout chapters 2–8 of the Book of Moses. The current article is a conceptual bookend to these earlier studies, demonstrating that the account of heavenly ascent in Moses 1 provides a compelling prelude to a narrative outlining laws and liturgy akin to what could have been used anciently as part of ritual ascent within earthly temples.

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In this article, we describe significant resemblances in narrative structure between the story of heavenly ascent given in Moses 1 and an ancient text of Jewish origin called the Apocalypse of Abraham (ApAb).

As both “the earliest mystical writing of Judaeo-Christian civilization”1 and a foundational text for Islamic scripture,2 ApAb plays a prominent — and in some respects unique — role in its genre. Notably, ApAb is “the only Jewish text to discuss foreordination, Satan’s rebellion, and premortal existence.”3 Adding inestimably to the value of the text itself is the singular series of six beautiful color illustrations within the Codex Sylvester, “the oldest and the only independent manuscript containing the full text of ApAb.”4 Photographs of the original illustrations are published here for the first time. Besides their intrinsic merit as works of ancient [Page 180]religious art, these illustrations shed light on how medieval Christians in the East understood the older Jewish text in their day.

Because studies comparing ancient manuscripts with modern scripture are bound to be controversial, we will begin with a somewhat lengthy section addressing questions about our purpose and methodology.