Talk:D&C 1:1-39

unable to open pdf

Is anyone else having problems with the pdf in the link to The Evening and the Morning Star? This link is on the commentary page. The link goes to the page okay but then I get an error when actually trying to open the pdf (647.pdf) on that page. Just wondering if it is my setup. --Matthew Faulconer 10:11, 16 September 2012 (CEST)

v. 1:11-16: Idols vs. prophets

Joe, I think it's interesting and significant that v. 16 mentions idols, esp. since I've just been rereading Jim F.'s Community in Gen 2-3 article where he talks about the theomorphic connotation of Gen 1:26 in contrast to the anthropomorphism of neighbor gods. I think it'd be very interesting to follow this idea in other passages, how the prophetic calling is a culmination of this theomorphism begun in Gen 1:26 and how, in this light, we can better understand the nature and scope of idolotry. --RobertC 03:39, 11 Oct 2006 (UTC)

There is something to all of this, Robert, and I've spent a couple of days mulling over it. First, it seems clear that verse 16 subsumes under the figure of idolatry everything except the work surrounding Joseph Smith (per verse 17). Second, you bring up in your most recent post here the fact that there is very little of this theme in the D&C, which suggests a different prophetic task for Joseph than was had by the OT prophets. Now, taking these first two points together: Joseph Smith, as a Gentile prophet, has a rather different task from that of the Israelite prophets of the OT. If the OT prophet had the task of calling the covenant people back into the covenant, the task was profoundly political (as the Book of Abraham makes quite clear, idolatry is entirely a question of politics): the prophet was trying to draw political boundaries, trying to draft his people back into the covenant of atonement, trying to maintain the connectedness between this particular people (the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and their God (ostensibly, YHWH). Joseph Smith, however, had a radically different task. With no covenant hanging over his head, he spoke to a whole world already bound up in idolatry. That is, Joseph functioned/functions as a pagan prophet to the pagans. There is, perhaps, no escaping this point. But then, would there not be reason to speak more constantly of idolatry in that case? But maybe not. The call to the Gentiles is apparently not first and foremost a call to renounce idolatry, but a call to take up quite seriously the task of attending to Israel's cause. Only when the Abrahamic covenant begins to be extended to these Gentiles (long about 1842) does Joseph begin to reveal and to discourse on the nature of God, and how one must begin to think Him. The essentially non-doctrinal foundations of the Church--I have especially the Book of Commandments in mind here--suggest a sort of patience with Gentile confusions, if not a sort of acceptance of Gentile Christianity. Joseph almost constant battle against "sectarianism" was more a call for Gentiles to unite in the common task of attending to the gathering of Israel than it was an establishment of an anti-sectarian sect. I imagine that it was for reasons like this that, say, the priesthood itself was not understood as a definitive point of the Church until 1835, etc. At any rate, there is some major difference signaled in all of this.

Now, I have not written this into the commentary because it is all just coming to open for me at present, and I'm not sure how to work it in there. I suppose I would also be interested to hear any responses to this rather radical reading before I work it into the commentary. One further point has to be thought as well. What is the connection between the D&C treatment of idolatry and the treatment of the same in the NT and the Book of Mormon? Neither of those books has anything like a focus on the subject either. In terms of the NT, this is not surprising, if the analysis above has any grounding. The Book of Mormon, however, is something of a surprise. While idolatry is often mentioned there, it is not a theme of the prophetic discourses. I'm not sure what that may mean for the model I've worked out here. Perhaps it calls it into question. --Joe Spencer 13:31, 12 Oct 2006 (UTC)