Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Does God live on a planet called Kolob? I think Kolob is probably one of the basest doctrines that we have as a church. And yeah, it's one of the most esoteric ones. We don't really talk about it or really understand it very much, but it has some really cool stuff going on in the Book of Abraham in Abraham, chapter three. So we've got an Egyptologist with us to break down specifically the astronomy chapter in the Book of Abraham. So Abraham, chapter three. God talks to angel Abraham about stars, levels of stars, Kolob, and different intelligences. And it can feel a little bit abstract and a little bit esoteric, but there's some really cool gospel connections as I've been learning. Stephen published this book with some other Egyptologists, A Guide to the Book of Abraham, and my mind was blown a couple times as I was learning some of these insights. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. Welcome guest Stephen, also host Stephen. I know we've been doing a lot with Stephen, but the reality is, like, we're Latter Day Saints are studying the Book of Abraham in me right now. And so I am just so excited to just pound Book of Abraham stuff because it is so cool. More people need to appreciate how cool the Book of Abraham is. And it's not a scripture to be embarrassed of, but rather to embrace. And it is freaking awesome.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Well said, Jasmine. I am going to have a sizzling hot take here to say that we need more Book of Abraham, not less of it. And contrary to what you hear out there on the Internet, there is much to commend to the Book of Abraham's authenticity and. And to its basedness, as you said.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: So, yeah, let's talk about Kolob and some other things here.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: You know what? That's it right there. Let's talk about Kolob. Someone get Deseret book on.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: We need a whole. Let's talk about a whole book on Kolob. The Book of Abraham book was not enough.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: You know, we have the hymn on Kolab. If you get out of Kolob, there's actually more Kolob hymns that got written that were never put in the hymn book, obviously. But, like, I've been able to track down quite a few Kolob hymns. And so Latter Day Saints historically have been big into Kolbash. It's pretty cool.
[00:02:01] Speaker C: There needs to be a Journal of Mormon History article on Kolob.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: I've actually thought about that because I have Enough. So if you go to mormoner.org, i wrote an article on Kolob, and so we'll put it in the show notes, but check out mormoner.org on Kolob. And yeah, I mean, I've thought about turning into an article, a journal article to discuss, like, the cultural reception of Kolob or whatever, but we're not gonna talk about that here. We're gonna talk about Kolob in the Book of Abraham.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: And why it's so cool.
[00:02:24] Speaker C: A real Kolob.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: In the Book of Abraham, you've got Abraham starting to tell his story of, like, how from Ur of the C. And he's making this covenant with God. And then it feels like the narrative just interrupts with God explaining astronomy. What's going on in this chapter.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: Yep. So we actually know why we have a cosmology account in the Book of Abraham. It's not just for funsies. It's actually in chapter three, verse 15.
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. So. So Abraham is going to give the Egyptians an astronomy lesson, basically. And guess what? We have a facsimile in the Book of Abraham where he does that. Facsimile 3. Except we don't have the narrative. We don't have that.
[00:03:04] Speaker C: We don't have the narrative for it. Right, but facsimile 3.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: But we have the picture.
[00:03:07] Speaker C: We should probably have a whole episode on facsimile 3.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Why on earth would God want to give the Egyptians an astronomy lesson?
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Because. Okay, well, let's answer that in just a second here. Let's set the stage here with our astronomy in the Book of Abraham, our Abrahamic astronomy, as we like to call it.
So as I discuss in my book here with my colleagues John Gee, Kerry Muhlstein and John Thompson, there are, broadly speaking, three models that Latter Day Saints have used to approach the Abrahamic astronomy in the Book of Abraham. Okay. Model one is that we want to approach it like it's a scientific textbook. And so when Abraham says that some of these stars and planets revolve more slowly than others. Aha. That must mean that Abraham knew about, like, Einstein's theory of relativity or something. Right. So you have that kind of approach.
[00:03:50] Speaker C: Where people want to show up theorem.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: That kind of thing.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: So it's okay. Abraham was like a super genius. He knew about relativity before Einstein, that kind of approach. So that's one popular model. Another popular model. And this is one that I approach with the text, is that the book of Abraham's cosmology is ancient, and it's derived from an ancient geocentric perspective. Geocentric meaning. You have the Earth as the center of your reference point. And in our book, we have a nice little diagram which will flash right here where you can see Abraham is standing on the Earth, and he's looking up at all the other celestial objects revolving around him. And God is pointing out what these things mean because he's going to take that knowledge to declare to the Egyptians to teach them about the plan of salvation. Okay, so in this model, this really makes sense if Abraham's using it as a teaching tool, because if the Egyptians don't have a modern scientific cosmology, then it. It doesn't matter. It wouldn't make sense to them if Abraham was like a super genius. He has to speak to them in a cultural context and in a language they understand. So that's model two, Model three. I'll just mention Kerry Milstein, our friend and my colleague at byu, calls it the Kolob centric model, which is that Abraham is seeing the cosmos with Kolob as the main reference point. You can kind of harmonize models 2 and 3. I prefer model 2. I think one's very persuasive, the geocentric model.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: So for Model 2, in addition to your book, I believe it was Dan Peterson, Bill Hamblin, and John Gee who wrote a paper in Astronomy, Covenant and Papyrus. Is that the name of the volume which is available? Well, I don't know where that's available.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: It's online.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: It's online.
[00:05:24] Speaker B: We'll throw it in the show notes.
[00:05:25] Speaker C: And that was, I think, the kind of the. If it wasn't the first, it was kind of like the major pioneering work on this idea that this is an ancient Near Eastern cosmology from a geocentric perspective.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: So that's what I think is happening. And as verse 15 says, the Lord gives him this vision of this cosmos using Abraham's ancient Bronze Age geocentric point of view in order to communicate more importantly, is not just that Kolob's a star or a planet, it's what is Kolob significantly in terms of its spiritual significance. And you stack up the parallels between Kolob and Jesus Christ, and you see, there's very clear thematic and doctrinal parallels.
They're near unto God. They are chief in authority. Right. They're the greatest ones. They're associated with creation. Right. Facsimile 2. Figure 1 talks about this Being related to the creation, that's related to Jesus Christ. So Kolob is a stand in for Jesus Christ basically that Abraham's going to use to give an astronomy lesson to the Egyptians to teach them the plan of salvation.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: So is Kolob a real thing or is it a symbol?
[00:06:29] Speaker B: Okay, so my super based take is that it is a real thing. Thank you very much. No, so that's another interesting question people have. Is this just a metaphor or is it an actual thing?
Our chapter in here on Kolob, we point out the fact that anciently there is a very important star. To the ancients, to the Egyptians, to the Greeks, to others, it's Sirius, which is. I am Sirius, Neil. And don't call me Shirley. No, so Sirius, which is sometimes called the Dog Star, Right. It's in the constellation Canis Major and it is like the brightest star to the naked eye, basically, as I understand it. Right.
And so anciently and today it has a lot of significance. And we discuss how the description given of Kolob seems to match how some ancient peoples describe and talk about Sirius. My kind of working theory is that Sirius the Dog Star is kind of a real world reference point that God can kind of point to for Abraham. Like, hey, you know how this star is a thing? Well, this is what Kolob is. So I don't know if it actually is serious. But like, I think conceptually there's a linkage being made in order to use it a real world reference thing for this idea of Kola meaning a star. I think it's a real star because that's how the book of Abraham seems to portray it. But I don't know if it is serious, just that that might be the, the thing Abraham can see with his eyes at night that God can point to to say this is like the star Kola.
[00:07:57] Speaker C: So, so I think to break that down a little bit so it can be a metaphor or an analogy for Jesus Christ and the astronomy. And I think it's maybe worth noting that's a very, very ancient Near Eastern thing to do.
The stars, right? Oh yeah, that's, that's all over the ancient Near East. We see it actually a little bit in the Bible. Right? Absolutely. In Egypt.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:08:22] Speaker C: But, but it also, it. There is some sort of literal referent because Abraham does seem to be looking up at the stars. And like Stephen said, God's identifying specific astral phenomena that he can see and associating it with these things that he's teaching him. So, so it's both Metaphor, but it's also there is some sor. Literal star, and Sirius is a very serious candidate, I suppose, for.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: Man, you got puns for days, Neil. For this man.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: You guys aren't gonna hear the end of it this episode.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: Well, actually, guess what? Guess what. There's a Egyptian pun in Abraham, chapter three.
[00:08:58] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Well, let's actually talk about Neil's puns.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: And this actually gets to this point of why God is using this. So if you go to chapter three, verses like 17, 18, and 19, we get a pivot where God goes from pointing out all the different stars to then he pivots into a depiction of the premortal council with the spirits. Okay, so go with me here. Verse 17.
If there be two things, one above another, and the moon be above the earth, then it may be that a planet or a star may exist above it. And there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do, but what he will do it. Verse 18. Howbeit that he made the greater star as also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, etc. They shall have no end. They shall exist. They are nolam or olam or eternal. There's a Hebrew gloss there. And then verse 19, the Lord said unto me, these two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other. There shall be another more intelligent than they. I am the Lord thy God. I am more intelligent than they all. So the pivot is on. Hey, you know how there's a hierarchy of stars? Well, there's also a hierarchy of spirits. And the most intelligent of all the spirits is me, the Lord thy God. Right. That is a pun that works well in Egyptian on two levels, really. Number one, it works well on a phonetic level because the Egyptian word for specifically like the radiance of stars.
Yahoo. Is similar to the Egyptian. It phonetically is similar to the Egyptian word for spirit, ahu. So that works as a phonetic pun. It also works as a conceptual pun because as Neil mentioned, it's ubiquitous in Egypt where, like deified kings or stars or what? Or excuse me, deified kings or gods are conceptualized and described as being stars.
[00:10:51] Speaker C: Right?
[00:10:51] Speaker B: Okay, so like in the. In the Pyramid texts. One of the big thing about the Pyramid text is helping the king ascend into the sky to become a star. Right? One of the circumpolar, imperishable stars, the Yahoo Or Ichihu. Right. So there's a pun. It seems to be a pun in Abraham 3 where he's making the connection between spirits and stars specifically to teach this to the Egyptians. So it works well in Egyptian to get them to think about it.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Wow, that is very clever.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: So Abraham's puns are better than Neil's dumb puns.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: Yes, so.
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Yes, they are.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: So that's broadly speaking, our Abrahamic astronomy. Conceptualizing what we're talking about before we.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Move on from Kolob, let's talk some etymology here.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:11:29] Speaker C: Because.
Because there's some really interesting. Like some people will. Oh, kolob. It sounds like a silly nonsense word, but I think there's some really interesting stuff going on, really, in both Egyptian and Semitic languages here.
So why don't you give us a rundown of what kolob means or probably.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Means, what it may mean, a plausible etymology.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: So there are two proposed etymologies that people have given for Kolob. We'll run through both of them very quickly here.
The first is the Semitic root kalb. KLB is how it's transliterated, meaning something like heart or center. Okay.
So the. The argument goes that kolob, which is klb, is related to. Sorry, it's. QLB is how it gets transliterated from Semitic into English meaning. And so it derives from this word meaning like heart. Okay.
That's an interesting theory. Or meaning like sort of like the center of the body sort of how, you know, that is a really interesting theory.
The only problem with it is that specific Semitic route, as I understand, is no more earlier tested than like Arabic or Syriac.
So we can't be sure if it goes back any further into like proto Semitic languages. Right.
[00:12:48] Speaker C: If it would go back to the Bronze Age.
[00:12:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: It certainly would be interesting for like a Kerry Muelstein theory of cosmology where it's like the center of the universe.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
So that's the one proposal. The other one that I'm really partial to is that it derives from the Semitic root qrb, Korob, meaning to be close at or to be approximate to. Okay. The reason why I am so I have an affinity for this theory, for this etymology is two reasons. Number one, that root is attested, or words that derive from that root are well attested. From Akkadian. Right. Ugaritic.
We even have Egyptian cognates. Right. We can reconstruct an Afro Asiatic proto root for this where we have cognate descendants. It's even in Hebrew. Karov. Right. Like things like that.
[00:13:40] Speaker C: Afro Asiatic, by the way, being a parent language for both Semitic and Egyptian languages. Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Think like Indo European. Right.
For this Case for Egyptian and Semitic languages. So we have a. We have a Afro Asiatic root that this could fit in. We have attestations of cognates descending from this root in both. Egyptian cob. A cob meaning like at the center of something or in the midst of mkab. Right. Hebrew, Karov, Akkadian, Karibu. So we have plenty of attestations for it. And the other reason why I like it is because in the book of Abraham, whenever it mentions kolob, in verse 3, 9, and 16, it says the name of the Great One is Kolob because. Because it is near unto me. And in verse nine, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, Kolob, which is set nigh unto the throne of God. And then in verse 16, Kolob is the greatest of all the Koch albeam, or the stars that thou has seen, because it is nearest unto me. So I think. So there's a pun there.
[00:14:41] Speaker C: There's more. There's just puns for days in here.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Puns for days.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: But just some. One thing I think we should clarify for people.
You're saying qrb, but Kolob has an L. Right. And so just from a linguistic standpoint, though, that's really not a difficulty. Not a problem, because we have. Those are both liquids, liquid consonants. And actually, especially with Egyptian into Semitic, we actually see the r to l all the time. Transition all the time.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Okay. But I have a bone to pick with you for another etymology. In verse 13, it says this is shinne Ha.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Which is the sun. That just sounds like Joseph Smith said, oh, the sun's shiny. Let's call it shiny.
[00:15:21] Speaker C: Ha.
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: What's going on there?
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Maybe he's Canadian. It's shiny, Eh?
[00:15:25] Speaker B: Shiny eh? Yes, exactly. Shanae Ha. What's happening? We've got a chapter here, Shanay Ha. That's how I pronounce it. Who knows if that's how you actually pronounce it? We don't have a received pronunciation of the word Shanay ha. Shine. Ha.
There is a very good candidate for. For this existing in Egyptian specifically, not from the name of the sun itself, which is a different word, but for the name of the sun's ecliptic. So we all know what the ecliptic is, Right. Neil, what's the sun's ecliptic?
[00:15:51] Speaker C: It's the. Basically the path it follows in the sky.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Right? Right. Yeah.
So that path that is. That it takes. The Egyptians had a name for that, and it's attested in texts from Abraham's day. It's called coffin text as Shinacha or in sort of Egyptologies it would be like she Neha or something like that. Right.
The actual. It's probably like Shina Hau or something. I mean you could reconstruct it, but like the. The continental skeleton is there and it's specifically the name for the ecliptic. The Egyptians sort of conceptualized it as the sun is sort of sailing through an ocean or rather a river, maybe the Nile, the celestial Nile that's bisecting the hemispheres. And they can track that. And just as you sort of float down a wandering river, the sun, because as you track it throughout the season, it doesn't take the same course. It changes its position throughout the sky. And so they sort of conceptualize it as a pool or a lake, a waterway, even a canal. And those are the determinatives using Egyptian like canal or lake or something to describe the path it's taking. Right.
So that's pretty cool that we have again, not the name for the sun itself, but the name for the path the sun takes.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: A solar related term.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Exactly. For the sun that appears. I think that could be a pretty good argument for this is where shineha derives from, is from this Egyptian word for the ecliptic of the sun. Not too bad. Wow.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: So in Abraham's day in Egypt, there's an Egyptian word that means the path that the sun takes every day. And then in the book of Abraham we've got a scripture that says this is Shinnah, which is the sun.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: Which is the sun. Yep. So kind of interesting, right? Yeah, that's kind of fun.
[00:17:33] Speaker C: I think that would even be a case like where what you see is you just see some linguistic shift or some meaning shift as though as the word is is picked up by Abraham from Egyptian or whatever and is adopted, he's maybe shifting the meaning or maybe.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Misunderstanding or he's not being precise with the meaning.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: But that. And again, from a linguistic standpoint, you see that kind of linguistic shift all the time as people adopt loan words and things like that into. Into their languages.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: So after the God introduces all these stars and then shifts it into spirits, then he goes and says, oh yes. And then in verse 22, I also gathered these intelligences and there were many noble and great ones and I saw that they were good and I stood in the midst of them. And it talks about how like these many great ones, I will make rulers. And you, Abraham, you were one of them. And Latter day saints read this as kind of a scripture about the pre existence And God making the plan of salvation. But what's really going on here in this chapter?
[00:18:32] Speaker B: So what's happening here, starting in about verse 22, is it's my favorite thing in the whole world. I love it. I love it so much. I've written like 50 articles on it. The divine council. Da da dum.
So this is a concept that biblical scholars have talked about for years and years. It is across the pages of the Hebrew Bible.
It's not some weird fringe Mormon apologist thing to say this, right?
So anciently including in the Bible, but in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, in Canaan, all over the place, frequently you see a divine council where a chief God is in a pantheon, if you want to call it that, with other deities or other divinities and they act together in a council setting to like deliberate actions or to carry out creation.
It appears in various contexts. But the idea of a divine plurality, a divine council of gods that are working together in harmony in some regard, that is what's showing up here in Abraham chapter three. And then later in Abraham's chapter four and five, it's the gods plural, that do the creation. And in fact the gods took counsel among themselves. Appears in the language of Abraham 4.
[00:19:42] Speaker C: And 5 to describe chapter 426. I believe it specifically says that.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Yeah, the gods took counsel. Right. And that sort of thing. So this is a, a dead ringer divine council scene in our Book of Abraham. That is absolutely at home. I mean it's, it's almost funny. I have to like justify it at this point. Like if you go read any Near.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: Eastern scholarship, this was a big thing for him.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Michael Heiser, there's, there's a, a bibliography as long as my arm of scholars of the ancient near east that talk about the divine council. Right. So it's funny, I have to, I kind of justify this, but it's like a cliche at this point. Yes, a divine council. Abraham seeing a scene of other divinities. Right. Well, we can talk about noble and great ones in a second. That's not at all controversial to have that in our Book of Abraham. It's right at home in Bronze Age ancient Near East.
[00:20:25] Speaker C: And I want to just mention, because Stephen says he's written tons of articles on this, there's obviously a chapter of it in his guide to the Book of Abraham.
But this is also like one of the OG papers of Stephen Smoot on the Book of Abraham.
Council, chaos and creation in the Book of Abraham. It was in what was at the time being called the Journal of the Book of Mormon and other Restoration Scripture, long title from back in 2013. You guys, this was like, I'm pretty sure. Undergrad, Steven. Undergrad, plucky undergrad Steven Smoot, writing about the divine council in the Book of Abraham.
You should check it out.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Fun story about that article.
That article helped me get married.
I am dead serious.
[00:21:08] Speaker C: Wow, okay. Because story basically new Smoot lore.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Unlock lore drop on this episode.
So when I was dating, now my wife, we went on a couple dates and I told her what I do. Oh, I'm a grad student. This is when I was in grad school, right.
And oh yeah, I'm doing all this research and here's some of the things I published and I mentioned this article. Oh, I published on the divine council, including this thing. And my wife and she asked her, she's told the story. I'm not making it up. She went home, she googled me, my name and that article.
Because she's like, is this guy like some kind of weirdo or what's going on here? Is this some kind of nerd? Yeah, fringe weirdo. Yeah, like, what's going on here? So she googled my name, she found the article and she read it and she was like, oh, this is like really cool. And, oh, I kind of like that this guy is like this.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: That's the best thing any super scholar wants to hear.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: It gets better. So. And she told me this. She said yes. So when I read it, I was like, oh, well, basically, you know, it was like, oh, he's really serious about his faith and his testimony and the scriptures. And she loved that, right? So we were compatible that way. Fast forward about a year or two later. And for Christmas, right before we got married, actually right before we got engaged, so we were pretty serious in the relationship. She actually drew for me a picture because she's an artist. She drew the divine council for me for a Christmas present. And we'll put it on the screen here.
So, Amberly, love you, babe.
Thank you for the picture.
[00:22:36] Speaker C: Okay, guys.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Noble and great ones. Okay?
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Noble and great ones.
So among the pre existent, you know, intelligences in the council, specific ones are singled out to be noble and great ones. I have an article on the foreordination of Abraham where Abraham has said, thou art one of them. Thou was chosen before thou was born. First of all, noble and great. Those are common epithets used by the Egyptians to describe divinities. And as a matter of fact, I was just reading in a text recently where it. It describes the great ones and it has a God determinative. So it's clearly like the great gods or whatever.
Shepesh, nature, noble God, very common epithet in Egypt. So that would have rung with Abraham's Egyptian audience. But Abraham is specifically foreordained to be a ruler here on the earth. God says this idea of, like, divine foreordination. That plays out very well. That plays out very nice. The Egyptians believe that their kings and gods were preordained by the gods to be kings here on the earth. And we have these lengthy texts, these royal propaganda texts, where it says king so and so was begotten by this God and was foreordained, was chosen before he was born to come and be the king and things like that.
[00:23:48] Speaker C: Was chosen before thou was born.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, so. So for Abraham's Egyptian audience, they would have been hearing this language and the idea is, oh, so it's not just our kings, it's. It's others like Abraham and other great.
[00:24:01] Speaker C: Men, you know, or could I maybe even suggest there's a little bit of a polem, like a polemic in there.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Oh, totally.
[00:24:06] Speaker C: Like the Lord is actually saying, like he's using the Egyptian concepts to say, actually it's Abraham who I chose before he was born. He's the noble and great one and he was the one who was chosen, not the pharaohs.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: Yes, I think you're right there. I argue as much in my article on this. It ties back with Abraham, Chapter one, because we have Abraham versus Pharaoh, the priest of Pharaoh who has the legitimate right to kingship and rulership and things like that. So that works very nicely for us. It's not just a divine council, it's not just for ordination. They are portrayed in ways that work really well for a Bronze Age, Ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern sort of context for how this works. It's integrated organically into the narrative arc of the Book of Abraham where it's legitimating or legitimizing Abraham's rule and his priesthood claims and things like that.
So that's pretty great. And even specific language, noble and great ones. Yeah. You can find echoes in Egyptian texts that. That would have worked well for that.
[00:25:05] Speaker C: So now I do want to maybe stick something in here and you can correct me if I'm wrong. I don't know the Egyptian background well enough to be confident of this. But generally in the ancient Near East, I do think something that sets this apart and makes a profound doctrinal contribution as far as the restoration is concerned is in the ancient near east, the gods and the council of the Gods were not typically thought to be premortal humans. Right. We are not part of the council. Right. But in the book of Abraham and in our, in the Latter Day Saint conception of this today the divine council is us. Right. In the premortal world. And presumably the ongoing divine council is other premortal spirits or maybe post mortal spirits in some cases. Right. And that's maybe getting a little deep theologically. We don't actually have any statements on that. But the idea, the distinction though, and it sounds like for Egypt at least, maybe a pharaoh could have been conceived as being a premortal. Preordained. Foreordained.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Preordained certainly.
[00:26:07] Speaker C: Yeah. But they didn't necessarily have this conception of the gods.
The divine council is actually composed of us.
We were actually part of that in a pre earth life kind of thing.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: That is one of the unique Latter Day Saint additions to this idea. Because in the Hebrew Bible they are just called B' Nai Elohim, sons of God. Right. There's no backstory or genealogy to these people, for the most part to these divinities. So this idea that yes, there's a continuum of gods to humanity, like on this sort of spectrum, and we are on that, that's a unique Latter Day Saint thing. But to sort of appropriate something that Dan Peterson once said, our Latter Day Saint concept of the premortal council is a lot closer than the non existent concept in like evangelical or Catholic Christianity. Right. So it's not one to one in all cases, but we're closer if that we have because we have one. You other. Most other Christians don't even have a concept of divine counsel, even though it's clearly there both in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere.
[00:27:05] Speaker A: Interesting. Okay, so if we believe in preordination and having these noble and great ones. Tell me about Lucifer. Is Jesus Satan's brother? Was he foreordained to be Satan?
[00:27:17] Speaker B: All of our evangelical listeners, close your ears. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about the fall of Lucifer real quick. Because in Abraham chapter three, we have. There's one that comes before God and says, here am I, send me. And there's another one that comes and says here am I. And God says, I will send the first. And the second one gets mad and he falls and he loses his first estate. That's a summary of the passage. Clearly this is an allusion to the fall of Lucifer. Right.
And Moses, chapter four has stuff on this Book of Revelation, all that kind of stuff. What's going on here though? That's interesting in our book of Abraham. Okay, so put aside the specific, like, kind of anachronistic sense. It's Lucifer that's falling. Right? Like that. It's the Satan adversary figure. The idea of myths about gods who fall from the divine council because they rebel against the high God or the chief deity.
That's well attested among Hittite sources, Mesopotamian sources. Right.
As as a matter of fact, the. The story. And From Isaiah, chapter 14 of the Shining One, the son of dawn gets translated as Lucifer in the Vulgate.
[00:28:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Who falls because he said, I will ascend to the throne of God. Many biblical scholars I've read think that that is a later Israelite echo of this earlier myth of a deity rebelling against the chief deity because he wants to take glory for himself in the divine council or something like that. Right. So the story in Abraham of Lucifer falling out of anger that his plan wasn't accepted or whatever. Again, we have a specific Latter Day Saint sort of spin on that. Right. That is informed by other revelation, but the core concept is attested at the time of Abraham. Okay, and I want to read this quote by a biblical scholar named Ryan Stokes that got published in the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Monsters. That's a great title for a book published just this year in 2020.
[00:29:06] Speaker C: So this isn't old, outdated.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: This is brand new, hot out of the oven. Okay, let me read this quote here.
That kind of gives a sense of this Satan figure in the Hebrew Bible. We call him Lucifer, where this idea comes from. Quote, the earliest known mention of a Satan is found in the Hebrew scriptures writings of Israel and Judaism dating to the first millennium bce.
Although scholars have searched for conceptual antecedents of this figure in the literature of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and other ancient civilizations, they have done so without a great deal of success. The literature of other groups from this era and earlier provides only a very general context for comprehending the origins of Satan. Here's the kicker. Ready?
Going on. One reads in these texts of a divine court, a group of divine beings who occasionally gather to deliberate and who govern the world in various capacities, often under the authority of a chief deity. It is within such a context that one should understand the origin of the Satan figure in the theology of ancient Israel.
Thank you very much. TLDR the earlier myths about a deity rebelling against the high deity in the divine council, which is in our Book of Abraham, that is what this scholar is saying influenced the later depiction of Satan in the Bible. The fall of Lucifer or Satan in the Bible.
[00:30:31] Speaker C: And so something That I actually find really interesting about that. And you're talking. This is something that goes back certainly to the second millennium bc, Abraham's day.
It's really ancient. This is not an Egyptian thing, but it's really all over the ancient near east, right? One of the big ones is this Mesopotamian creation story called the Enuma Elish, right? And that one, I don't think goes back to Abraham, but it comes pretty close to the time of Moses usually, which is interesting to me because I think it actually has maybe a better connection to the book of Moses than the book of Abraham per se. But in that book, I can't remember who the head God is. Is it Ea or something? Ea is how they spell it. But he's the head God at the time. But there's this.
The rebellious deity is Tiamat, which is a cognate to Tehome, which is Genesis, you know, one, the deed, right?
But in that, the gods turn to the son of the head God, whose name is Marduk. And he is asked to do this cosmic battle with Tiamat. And when he's asked to do it, he says he'll do it on the condition that if he is victorious, he will get the glory, he will get the honor, he will get to replace his father on the throne and become the head of the council of the gods. And again, if you go Back to Moses 4, right, Moses 4 1, what's Satan's role? Right? Satan is kind of following this script where he says, I'll go.
Behold, here I am. Send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind and that one soul shall not be lost. And surely I will do it. Wherefore give me thine honor, right? And so what we have here is maybe a subversion. Like, it subverts your expectations, though, because he's not the one. He's actually the monster in the end, right? He's Tiamat, not Marduk. Really.
In this. In this story, it subverts expectations. He's following the script, the ancient Near Eastern script here, saying, yeah, I'll be the sun.
[00:32:43] Speaker A: I will.
[00:32:44] Speaker C: I will conquer, and then I will get the glory. And then the beloved son, as it says in verse two, which was my beloved and chosen from the beginning. He said unto me, father, thy will be done, and the glory be thine forever. And it subverts those expectations. He actually says, no, I'll still let the father have the honor and the glory. And then Satan rebels, right? In verse 3, he becomes the actual cattle. Like he becomes what actually has to be conquered in the end. Right. But just kind of an interesting way that the book of Moses kind of plays with these motifs in ways that are.
Like I said, if you were part of an ancient Near Eastern audience, you would have seen this coming, but then you would have seen a twist that would have thrown you off.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: It's also worth noting that Moses, where we get Lucifer. Right. And Jesus Christ named figures, Abraham, it's just the first and the second.
So we sort of fill in who these figures are from our understanding from other scriptures. But the book of Abraham avoids that sort of anachronistic identification of this being specifically Lucifer. So it's maintaining the core of the myth, the myth theme and later scripture expands on that to explain who these characters were.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm almost hearing from both of you guys that the latter day saint conception of what happened is almost more ancient than what survives in the Bible. Is that what I'm hearing?
[00:34:00] Speaker B: Well, kind of, yeah.
[00:34:04] Speaker C: It resonates with very ancient material, I think is the best way to put it. And it seems to interact with the expectations of that literature as if it were familiar with those that literature and those genres and expectations.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: So in Abraham 3, you've got all of these motifs showing up that tie into ancient Egyptian culture and ancient Semitic culture, Near Eastern culture. Does this also happen in the creation story that dovetails right after Abraham Chapter three?
[00:34:33] Speaker B: Yes, it absolutely does. And Abraham four and five. The creation account is a specific narrative continuity. Chapter three, James E. Talmadge put a chapter break there. Check out our history on the Pearl of Great Price on James E. Talmadge. He gave us our chapters we used today as published by Joseph Smith. It's one big same story.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: So the whole collab discussion is really all part of the creation story in.
[00:34:56] Speaker B: The book of Abraham because it dovetails. It goes from God showing Abraham the stars and the in the planets and then to the divine council and then from the council to the council going down and creating stuff. Right. And the God said, let us go down and create this stuff. Right. Like, so it dovetails there into Abraham.
[00:35:11] Speaker C: To in fairness to James Talmage, he is trying to create a versification that will correlate relatively well to what we have in Genesis 1. Sure.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: So chapter 4 and 5 in Abraham.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: Compare those texts, relates to Genesis 1 and 2.
[00:35:25] Speaker B: But this is just to say, yes, it's all part of the same narrative continuity where the divine council, the next thing Abraham sees, after he sees the divine council is the council going and doing what they're supposed to do, which is to create the earth. And we'll just highlight a few things in those two chapters because there's a lot we could say. Obviously they parallel Genesis chapters one and two. That's another conversation to have how that might work. But let's look at a couple things.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: So right off the bat, the Lord said, let us go down. And they went down at the beginning. And they, that is the gods, plural, organized and formed the heavens and the earth. Notice it's God's plural. Okay, so that's again, the divine council is still here. And as we point out earlier, they later say, as we have counseled together, let's go to the thing. And they are organizing and forming the heavens and the earth. Right. They are not creating it the way that it's rendered in our King James Genesis chapter one. In most English translations, they are forming and organizing what's happening. Here we have creation out of pre existing chaos.
And in ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies, take my word for it, my dissertation is on cosmogony from the ancient near east, from Egypt specifically.
Almost always the stuff that they're organizing is like chaotic water. And so it's super common. What you get is there's this unorganized, chaotic dark water that the gods need to tame and bring under control. And the first thing they do is like a little spot of land pops up out of the water and the gods can go down and they can sort of build things based on this little plot of land. Usually the first thing you do is build a temple, by the way, on the little plot of ground.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: That happens at Edfu and Esna. That's another conversation. But, but the idea here is pre existing chaotic matter already exists. The gods are not poofing it into existence ex nihilo. They are forming and organizing the heavens and the earth out of this stuff. Okay, so in the mythic conceptual realm of Abraham's day, this is exactly what we see. Creation ex nihilo is a much later theological and philosophical position that people are going to originate and that they're going to sort of impose back onto the Bible. But in the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis chapter one in ancient Egypt, in Mesopotamia, all over the place, you are subduing chaotic elements and organizing and fashioning them and giving them like purpose and function. Okay? And that's what Abraham 4 and 5 are doing. So that's a big dead giveaway that our book of Abraham is right at home in the ancient Near East. It is not poofing it into existence from nothing. It is organizing pre existing chaos.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: Interesting, interesting.
[00:38:01] Speaker C: I'd actually like to, if we could just back up for a second verse one of chapter four, the expression let us go down.
I think that's actually a really interesting expression. We also find that in Genesis, but not in the creation accounts, that is in Genesis 11, verse 7. Right. Go to, let us go down. And there confound their language. This is obviously, this is the Tower of Babel. In this context though, you don't actually have anything explicit about who the Lord is talking to when he says this. But the, I don't know if I would say consensus, but a very widely held point of view among scholars is that this is the divine council. Right. So this is language, this is, this is kind of stock language from the ancient near east for like the council organizing and going and taking action down on the earth or whatever is like, let us go down, let us go down to the realm of men and we're going to do whatever it is they're they're setting out to do, Right?
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Yep, exactly. Let me just point out in verse nine when I mentioned in ancient Egypt, a little plot of land, the primeval hillock, emerges from the water. Verse 9, the gods ordered, saying, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place and let earth come up dry. And it was so, as they ordered. Right. So let it come up. I'd have to double check, but I think it's different in the King James version, how they render that. This seems to be a more sort of technical rendering of this idea of like the primeval hillock coming out of the primordial waters where then the gods will go down. And again, in many of the accounts, they built a temple there. Right. They built the first kind of sanctuary. So there's fun little things like that teaming all over. Do you have King James?
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Yeah. So your King James language there, Genesis 1:9. And God said, let the waters unto under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go.
[00:39:52] Speaker C: And it was so. And the come up, the language of come up is actually more consonant with Egyptian mythology from what I understand.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
[00:40:00] Speaker A: So we've got evidence that Kolob is ancient Shinaha, you've got Egyptian wordplay with stars and spirits. And we've got ancient Near Eastern divine council mythos going on in ancient Near Eastern imagery for creation showing up in the Book of Abraham. This is like a handful of evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Abraham. So what is this telling us about the Book of Abraham, does this definitively true that it is or prove that it is true?
[00:40:26] Speaker B: I wish it did that. That would be nice. I don't think it's definitive proof, as in, you know, we can pack up our bags and go home and there's nothing more to discuss.
I don't think you really can prove scripture in this way. Right.
But what this evidence does indicate is that in many appreciable and material respects, our Book of Abraham fits very comfortably in the world of the ancient Near East. And it's not just because Joseph Smith is piggybacking off of Genesis chapter one. You might be able to get away with that with some things in Abraham chapter four or five. Right. But Book of Abraham chapter three especially has no parallel with material in Genesis. It is unique to its own Right.
[00:41:07] Speaker A: And that's one of the things that makes Mormons weird, is that you've got this collab stuff going on, but you're actually saying that it's the weird supports authenticity.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: The weird stuff is what mostly supports the authenticity Book of Abraham. So I think that what, what we're seeing here, the Book of Abraham, in my judgment, is not reading like a 19th century Protestant Christian text like what you would expect in terms of we're just going to sort of slavishly defer to the King James Bible of Genesis or whatever it is going much deeper than that, much more ancient than that. It is tapping into demonstrably ancient things from the day and time of Abraham so that the whole picture conceptually fits with Abraham's time and day in many regards.
[00:41:47] Speaker C: And I think it is worth noting a lot of the ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian stuff we've talked about here really doesn't come to light until like the late 19th century, at the earliest, some 50 something years after Joseph Smith is, has been, you know, is died. And certainly after the Book of Abraham production and things like that.
The things that, like there are hints of this in like Genesis 1, like there are hints of the divine council in Genesis 1 and there are hints of it here and there. But recognition of those hints didn't really come until we had the additional ancient Near Eastern source material that helped scholars start to situate the biblical text in its ancient Near Eastern context. And then they were like, oh, this whole like, let us go down, let us make man in our own image.
This is divine counsel language.
But that's not something they really picked up on until they had that additional evidence. And so either Joseph Smith is after a couple lessons with Joshua Satius, tapping into and Picking up on these ancient.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: Clues.
[00:42:55] Speaker C: At a genius level rate, 50 something years before scholars really do, or something ancient has been restored.
[00:43:03] Speaker B: Yeah, right. You mentioned Joshua Satius. Here's a fun anecdote to end this whole conversation with, to give you a sense of just how radical this stuff was to Joseph Smith's contemporaries and in his sort of immediate religious context.
So Joseph Smith studies Hebrew with Joshua satius in early 1836, just for a couple months, Right. It's sort of introductory level stuff. And he does pick up on things like, oh, Elohim is a plural noun, things like that. Right. So clearly that I think in some sense has sort of attuned Joseph Smith to receive revelation of this. I wouldn't deny that by any means. However, there's a great line right before he dies in one of his last discourses where Joseph Smith says, I was arguing with a learned Jew, Satius, right, Clearly Satius, about the meaning of Elohim, meaning gods. And when I suggested that it means gods, he said, it can't mean that because it would destroy the Bible.
Satius had converted to Unitarian Christianity, by the way, by the time he's teaching Joseph Smith. Right. So the point here we have documented in Joseph Smith's own day when he tries to go down this path of like, hey, divine counsel and stuff like that, Right. So this is all to say that Joseph Smith is ahead of the curve here in terms of tapping into these demonstrably ancient things that work very well, I think in our Book of Abraham.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So it's true, Satis has some influence with Elohim and things like that. But the final picture we get, it's really awesome and it's rock solid. You can ground it in the ancient near east, in the world of Abraham. And that's why to bring us all back full circle to what I said earlier, I want more Book of Abraham, not less of it. Kolob is super based. We need to lean into it, we need to own it. It's awesome. It's weird for us and kind of funny, but it's also really cool.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Amen. So if you want to have some more mind blowing nuggets of evidence and insight into the Book of Abraham. A guide to the Book of Abraham is probably like the tour de force on Egyptologists coming together, the Avengers, to really support the Book of Abraham. Remember, you can study deeply but still believe boldly. And we'll see you next time.
[00:45:18] Speaker B: Ra.
