Mormonism and Freemasonry/Hugh W. Nibley quotes

==

Questions

== Joseph Smith copied Masonic forms and ceremonies to create the LDS temple rites.

==

==

• "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. . . . There are, in fact, countless tribes, sects, societies, and orders from which [Joseph Smith] might have picked up this and that, had he known of their existence. The Near East in particular is littered with the archeological 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! Among the customs and religions of mankind there are countless parallels, many of them very instructive, 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 Latter-day Saint 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." John Gee and Michael D. Rhodes, eds., The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 2005), xxvii-xxviii.

• "The most consistent thing about histories of Freemasonry by its most eminent historians is the noncommittal position in the important matter of origins." Don E. Norton, ed., Temple and Cosmos (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 419.

• "[I]t was Joseph Smith who first pointed ['patternism'] out, recalling a common heritage from what he calls the archaic religion, coming down from Adam in such institutions as Freemasonry, and clearly pointing out their defects as time produced its inevitable corruption. What he himself supplied single-handedly is the original article in all its splendor and complexity." Don E. Norton, ed., Temple and Cosmos (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 48.

• "Question: Where did the Masons get the ceremonies they have today? Did they come from these documents? Answer: Their ceremonies didn't come from these documents. Nobody had the texts until recently. They do give us an interesting check. The Masonic rites have a lot in common with ours. Of course in part they do have the same source, if you trace them way back. But what a different picture you see. The Masons don't give any religious meaning to them. They think of them as symbolic, as abstract. They don't see any particular realities behind them. The rites have nothing to do with salvation, but consist only of broken fragments. . . . They have been picked up from various times and places, and you can trace them back." Don E. Norton, ed., Temple and Cosmos (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992), 319.

Nibley quotes the 17 June 1842 letter from Heber C. Kimball (a long term Freemason) to Parley P. Pratt. Kimball reports that the Prophet has said "Masonry was taken from the Priesthood, but has become degenerated." Nibley also quotes the Benjamin F. John report that the Prophet said "Freemasonry, as at present, is the apostate endowments, as sectarian religion [is] the apostate religion." Stephen D. Ricks, ed., Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and FARMS, 2008), 381.

==

Answer

==

== Notes ==