Mormon Heretic

No writings have ever been attributed to Jesus in the Bible.  However, there is an ancient manuscript that claims to be letters written between Abgarus, King of Edessa, and Jesus.  It’s a very short “book”, so I will quote it entirely.  But first, here’s a bit of background.  The official name of the document is The Epistles of Jesus Christ and Abrarus King of Edessa.  Lost Books of the Bible gives some background on this document.

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Ever wondered what kind of a child Jesus was?  Well, The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ tells us that Jesus was part healer, part genius, part brat.  It starts out with some interesting stories about happened to the holy family in Egypt (following Herod’s edict to kill all boys age 2 and under), and then goes on to tell that Jesus often miraculously killed adults and children that ticked him off.  This gospel has some interesting stories, and some really weird stories—definitely not the sort of Jesus most Christians would expect to see.

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The biblical account of the interactions between Joseph and Mary is very small.  To me, it almost makes Joseph and Mary appear 2-dimensional, and I never feel like I know them very well.  When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant before their wedding, we know that he considered cancelling the betrothal.  An angel intervened, and Joseph decided to continue with the wedding.  Many of us have imagined that this must have been very tough to deal with, but the details in the Bible of the interactions between Mary and Joseph have been quite sparse.

The Protevangelion fills in many of these details.   Read more…

A few months ago, I picked up a book called Lost Books of the Bible by William Hone on the clearance rack at Barnes and Noble.  It is one of the coolest books I have ever picked up.  There are 26 ancient books included in the compilation, dating to the earliest centuries after Christ.  These ancient writings include books such as The Gospel of Nicodemus, The Apostle’s Creed, the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, the Letters of Herod and Pilate, to name just a few.

The first 4 books deal with the childhood of Jesus.  With the Christmas season approaching, I wanted to share some of these really cool stories about Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.  I think you’ll enjoy learning some of the extra-biblical stories.  Honestly, I don’t think I’ve read so much cool stuff about the life of Jesus.  I want to start with the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, and discuss some of these other ancient writings in coming weeks.  Some of these stories overlap, and I think it will be interesting to see the different, sometimes conflicting accounts over the coming weeks.

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I attended Sunstone back in August.  Bridget Jack Jeffries (who runs a blog called Clobberblog), gave a fascinating presentation on female priesthood holders in the ancient Christian church.  Bridget is a “never Mormon” that attended BYU, graduating in 2005.  She “seduced” (her words, not mine) and married a BYU priesthood holder while there, and she is currently studying the History of Christianity in America at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago.  She has done some fascinating research on women and the priesthood in early Christianity that I wanted to share.

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I just finished the book Saint Peter: A Biography by Michael Grant.  I think it is misnamed.  I don’t feel like I know Peter any better, but it is a good book for learning about early Christianity.  The author describes how tough it is to really understand Peter both at the beginning, as well as the end.  From the Epilogue, pages 175-6,

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I wanted to get this post up sooner, but I’ve been really busy correcting final exams.  I really enjoyed the last day of Sunstone, since I was able to attend all day, rather than a session here or there.  Don Bradley gave a presentation titled “Dating Fanny Alger”, a bit of a play on words.  I remember he gave a funny line to the effect of “By all accounts, she was hot!”  Anyway, Bradley tried to pin down when the “affair” happened.  Apparently, Emma discovered Joseph and Fanny late at night in the barn.  According to Bradley, Alger appeared pregnant.  Emma threw a fit, and threw Alger out of the house.  (Apparently Alger had been working as a sort of nanny.)

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Apostle Paul Savage of the Church of Christ with Elijah Message

Sunstone has been going on since Wednesday here in Salt Lake City.  It ends tomorrow, and I thought I would give a few words about the conference.  I have been blogging at Mormon Matters for about a year and a half, and have never met any other bloggers here….until this week!  It has been nice to nice BiV and Stephen Marsh.  I hope to meet others tomorrow.  It was also nice to meet with a few apostles.

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I don’t ever think I’ve done 2 posts in one day before, but I want to address this other issue that we have been discussing in the Strangite post.  I’d like to discuss both Biblical and Book of Mormon archaeology.  Most people believe the Bible is on solid archaeological footing, but that isn’t actually true.  Many books have questionable authorship, and many places remain unidentified.  In a previous post, I discussed Questions about the Exodus: there isn’t a shred of evidence that it actually happened.  During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

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Bishop Rick has mentioned a few times that he believes the apostle Paul invented Christianity, so I thought I’d create a post to address this specific issue.  In my previous post on the Strangite Church, he said in a few comments,

I believe Paul invented Christianity, not Jesus. There are only a couple of last minute, thrown-in scriptures that Christians use to claim Jesus intended to start a new church, but the overwhelming evidence points to Jesus merely trying to reform Judaism.

He went on to say, Read more…

I received a pingback from my previous post on Theosis from someone at Christian Forums.  I have another post on President Lorenzo Snow’s famous couplet, “As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may be.”

I’ve had a few exchanges with people over there.  Since I spent so much time, I thought I would highlight some of these exchanges here and show a Biblical basis for Exaltation.
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Sorry there was no post last week.  I had planned to put this one up, but this has turned out to be one of my longest posts since my Priesthood Ban post.  This post is over 6000 words (14 pages), so be forewarned.  I’ve combined three different videos, so that’s why it took so long.  I’ll color code these quotes so you know which videos these quotes come from.   The videos are Science of the Exodus, by National Geographic; Exodus Decoded, by Simcha Jacobovici; and Exodus Revealed, by Discovery Media Group.

What I found interesting was the fact that there were many similarities.  The same experts and evidence often appeared in multiple videos, yet often different conclusions were provided.  It reminds me of the debate concerning Book of Mormon evidence.

During Passover celebrations in 2001, Rabbi David Wolpe created international headlines in Israel by proclaiming to his Jewish congregation in Los Angeles, “the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all.”

For more than 1700 years, Christians have been looking for Mount Sinai, the place where Moses received the 10 Commandments.  Constantine’s mother, Helena was probably the first Christian in search of Christian artifacts in the 4^th century.  Read more…

Today begins is an interesting week of Holy Days:  Palm Sunday, Passover, and Easter.  Today is Palm Sunday.  Passover begins Monday night at sunset, and of course Easter is next Sunday.  I thought I’d do a post which ties all of these related holidays (or stated better–Holy Days) together.

Palm Sunday

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