Scott Woodward:
Hi, this is Scott from Church History Matters. As we wrap up this series, we want to hear your questions about the book of Abraham. Next week we’re excited to have on the show Dr. Kerry Muhlestein to help us respond to your questions. He is an Egyptologist and an author and scholar on all things related to the book of Abraham, and Casey and I have drawn heavily from Dr. Muhlestein’s excellent research for each of our Book of Abraham episodes in this series. So if you want to contribute to our next episode, please submit your thoughtful questions anytime before October 19, 2023 to podcasts@scripturecentral.org. Let us know your name, where you’re from, and try to keep each question as concise as possible when you email them in. That helps out a lot. Okay, now on to the episode. So the book of Abraham is the touchpoint of some serious controversies, and we’ve talked about some of those in our last two episodes, and we’ll probably talk about them more next week as well. But, to be clear, the book of Abraham is also the source of some dazzling doctrinal gems which validate and expand upon other key restoration teachings. So in today’s episode of Church History Matters, we leave the controversial to bask, however briefly, in what to us makes the book of Abraham beautiful. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths. And today we dive into our ninth episode in this series dealing with Joseph Smith’s non-Book-of-Mormon translations and revelations. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward:
Hey, how you doing, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Welcome back to our discussion on the Book of Abraham.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I think it’s been a good discussion. We’re not Egyptologists, so we’re relying on the information of much smarter people here, but . . .

Scott Woodward:
Yes. We are not Egyptologists. I think I clarified I’m not that Scott Woodward who is the mitochondrial DNA Egyptology mummy guy. I’ve never met him, but I hear he’s a fantastic guy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I’m not that Casey Griffiths that is a football player for UCLA. So we’re continuing to talk about the book of Abraham here.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I’m looking forward to today’s discussion, but first let’s recap some of the things that we’ve said. Scott, do you want to give us an overview of what we’ve already talked about?

Scott Woodward:
Yes, sir. So, yeah, let me just—I’ll just recap last episode because more than that is too much. But last time we dealt with what we called the facsimile problem in the book of Abraham, which, just to review, it could be stated something like this: When modern Egyptologists examine Facsimile 1, Facsimile 2, and Facsimile 3 in the book of Abraham, those are the pictures in the book of Abraham, there’s little hieroglyphs that are still visible on some of those, and modern Egyptologists interpret those very differently than Joseph Smith did. The facsimiles, they say, really have nothing to do with Abraham, but they are—Facsimile 1 is an ancient embalming scene with the god Anubis taking people’s organs out and sticking them in jars underneath the lion couch. The second facsimile, that big circle, facsimile number 2, is called a burial hypocephalus and has nothing to do with Abraham, and facsimile 3 is a judgment scene from the 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead. So when modern Egyptologists look at that, they say, “This is not about Abraham,” right? So the conclusion that some people reach based on those facts—so those are the facts. The facts are none of those have to do with Abraham, according to modern Egyptologists. Those are the facts. Now, the conclusion that some people reach based on those facts is that this is evidence that Joseph Smith did not really have a gift to translate and is therefore a fraud, right? This is the checkmate move on Joseph Smith. We can finally test his ability to translate, and he has been found wanting and therefore a fraud. Now, we discussed last time that we believe that is an unnecessary conclusion, and it is certainly not the best one. We always want to invite what we call slow thinking on issues like this. We want to get into the minds of experts who are both, for instance, believing and have, you know, degrees in Egyptology, right? Who know how to handle records like this and know more about the ancient world that these records came from at that time and can help walk us through alternative options rather than just a quick snap judgment, “Oh, Joseph got it wrong, therefore he’s a fraud.” And so to think more clearly through this issue, to think slowly, it’s helpful, we talked about last time, to know that Egyptian Jews often used Egyptian drawings, which had an original Egyptian meaning, and then they would give them a new layer of biblical meaning, such as to tell stories about Abraham. Also, there is evidence of Egyptian priests using Jewish stories and ideas in their writing. So it kind of goes both ways, right? They‘d kind of cross-pollinate and culturally appropriate from one another. And this borrowing from each other and giving secondary meanings to Egyptian hieroglyphics could easily account for the disagreement between what modern Egyptologists say the fragments mean, i. e., the original Egyptian meaning, and what Joseph Smith interpreted them to mean, which is that secondary meaning that’s been applied to the hieroglyph to tell Abraham’s stories. And what’s helpful to strengthen that hypothesis is that since Joseph Smith’s day, the hypocephalus, that round disc of facsimile 2, has been linked directly with the Eye of Horus—it’s called the Wedjat Eye of Horus—and that Abraham has been linked to the Eye of Horus, being called the pupil of the Eye of Horus. So Abraham is somehow associated with that Facsimile 2 as the pupil of the Eye of Horus. So that’s interesting.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then number 3, in a text called the Testament of Abraham discovered after Joseph Smith’s day, Abraham is directly connected with the judgment scene pictured in Facsimile 3 from the 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead. So, again, what matters most here is not what those facsimiles originally meant but how those were repurposed by both Egyptians and Jews to tell stories about the life of Abraham during the time period and in the place where these papyri were written. And then those are the papyri that came into Joseph Smith’s possession. Then we get what we get in the book of Abraham. And so it is entirely plausible—in fact, much more plausible that that is the case than that Joseph Smith could have gotten so many things right about this. And then later to have discovered Abraham associated with all these facsimiles in secondary discoveries post Joseph Smith’s time. So over time, this seems to more vindicate Joseph Smith rather than—you know, the more scholarship on this that comes forth, the better Joseph Smith looks rather than vice versa. And that seems to be the sign of authenticity rather than fraud.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, and I think it’s fair to say he got so much right that it’s difficult to attribute his interpretation, especially these facsimiles, to just random chance—that he was guessing, and then all these discoveries come out afterwards that seem to support what Joseph Smith was doing. So we’re not claiming inerrancy in his interpretation of the facsimiles or his translation process, a lot of which we just don’t know very much about how it worked, we’re just basically saying, hey, he got a lot of stuff right, too much to dismiss him as someone who was just kind of making it up as he goes along.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But our main purpose here is to basically make Joseph’s interpretation of the facsimiles defensible, and I think it’s pretty defensible. You know, it seems like for a guy who grew up in upstate New York and lived in the American Midwest, he got an implausible number of things correct about these facsimiles and recontextualized them in a great number of ways.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. He’s either the best guesser in the history of the world, or there is something divine happening with Joseph Smith. Maybe his claims about the origin of these things is actually accurate.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Right? That by inspiration, he’s getting a book of scripture that—he never understood the base language, right? He never actually could read Egyptian.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But through revelation, we highlighted last time, like, all of his translation projects were, when you boil it down, revelation. The end. That’s it. It’s a revelation. So through him we got a book of scripture called the book of Abraham, which is highly defensible as an authentic ancient record. I guess those are the two options. Best guesser in the history of the world or authentic prophet.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I like how you said that. Implausible amount of things right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So that leads us to our question today, which is, if we’ve covered all the controversies in the book of Abraham, aren’t we done? Why are we doing another episode on the book of Abraham?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Why are we doing another episode? Why are we talking about this book still, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
This is—I’ll give credit to you. This is mostly your idea. You said, “I think we need one more episode.” Tell us why. Why do you feel like we need one more episode today, Casey?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Partially because I’ve noticed, you know, among a lot of people, even very faithful Latter-day Saints, there’s a tendency for people to just focus on the controversies—its origins, the facsimiles—and not really say, “Hey, why did we choose to canonize this?” It was canonized after Joseph Smith’s death. It was canonized after Brigham Young’s death, actually. John Taylor’s president of the church when this is canonized. So what about the book of Abraham kind of captured the Latter-day Saints to the point to where they felt like, hey, this isn’t just a cool thing that was published in a church periodical: it’s scripture. It’s not just scripture: it’s canon, based on our discussions. It’s a measuring rod for faithfulness. And I’ve noticed, kind of like the Book of Mormon, too, we spend sometimes so much time discussing its origins and the translation process that we don’t actually do what the most effective advocates for the Book of Mormon do, which is say, look at what it teaches.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And look at how complex it is. And the same thing with the Book of Abraham: We become so obsessed with what scrap of papyrus did Joseph Smith have at this point in time, and what does this line mean in the facsimile, that we don’t actually look at the text of the book of Abraham, which, honestly, is only eleven pages long, but contains some pretty profound stuff. And I’ll point to the Gospel Topics essay on the book of Abraham, which actually starts out before it gets in the controversy saying, hey, here’s why this is such a big deal. In fact, let me quote from it. It says this:

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
“The book of Abraham clarifies several teachings that are obscure in the Bible. Life did not begin at birth, as is commonly believed. Prior to coming to earth, individuals existed as spirits. In a vision, Abraham saw that one of the spirits was ‘like unto God.’ This divine being, Jesus Christ, led other spirits in organizing the earth out of ‘materials’ or preexisting matter, not ex nihilo or out of nothing, as many Christians later came to believe. Abraham further learned that mortal life was crucial to the plan of happiness God would provide for his children: ‘We will prove them herewith,’ God stated, ‘to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them,‘ adding a promise to add glory forever upon the faithful. Nowhere in the Bible is the purpose and potential of earth life stated so clearly as in the book of Abraham.” Now, that’s a big claim to make, and before we started recording, you and I actually were throwing around ideas, like, is there a place where the purpose of mortal life is stated more clearly than that scripture that they cite from the book of Abraham of “we will prove them herewith?” And I threw out 2 Nephi 2:25: “Adam fell that men might be, . . . men are that they might have joy.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The purpose of life is to have joy. You threw out a different one.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, D&C 49. I believe it’s verse, what, 15-17, where the Lord says that the earth was created so that men and women could get married and have children and fill the earth with the measure of its creation—that marriage and family life is central to the reason of creation, right? The telos of having an earth was so that men and women could marry and have babies.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Those are both good scriptures, but I want to point out, we don’t always have joy, right? And not everybody in this life is going to get married and have babies. And so I do sort of think that Abraham 3, that verse they cite there, is maybe the best one-sentence, here’s the reason why we’re here. And maybe 2 Nephi 2 and joy is what I’m going to go to on a good day, but on a bad day, I’m going to go to Abraham chapter 3 and say, well, the purpose of life is to be proven, to “prove them herewith to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” Because, to be honest with you, I think joy is the ultimate end and aim of our existence, but I think the part of existence that we’re experiencing right now is a mixed bag, right? There’s a lot of joyful things, and there’s a lot of painful things, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s in between, and Abraham’s assertion that the Lord told him that the purpose of life was to be tested, to be proved, seems like it resona—I mean, I think that’s the reason most Latter-day Saints would say, if somebody asked them, “Why are we here? What’s the purpose of life?”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And I think this is the only scripture that says anything like that, which is really interesting.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I always get tripped up with—and I argue all the time, by the way, in my mind, with scripture and—everything I hear, I’m always, like, wrestling with it. And so I’ll just be transparent about my wrestle with this one: “to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” I—my question I ask immediately is, “What percentage of people who’ve ever lived know what God has commanded them?” Like, how many people have had commandments from God? And it seems like a very small percentage, unless we include, like, other doctrines. We have to upload doctrines like the light of Christ and doctrines about, you know, having sort of an inherent understanding of right and wrong. If that’s what it’s talking about, I guess that’s okay, but if it’s, like, who has had, like, prophets of God conveying the will of the Lord to them as a people? Like, that’s a very small fraction of people who’ve ever lived, unless we upload another doctrine of postmortality, if you include in the second estate, in the spirit world, time where missionaries can go out to the dead and proclaim the gospel and give them a chance to prove themselves somehow, however that works, in postmortality. So on its own, I just—I don’t know. I wrestle. I’m like, “Ah, that seems to apply to a very small fraction of people unless we upload some other doctrines to accompany it,” which we might need to do. And that’s fine.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
See, and I’m fine with that, too. If you, for instance, upload the Light of Christ, most people have this intrinsic sense of right and wrong. I mean, I remember reading C. S. Lewis’s conversion story, and in Mere Christianity, he talks about this, how what converted him was the moral law—that everybody had this intrinsic sense of morality. That if the universe was just random and chaotic and dark and destructive, that wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t look at a person that steals from someone else and say, “That’s wrong”—we’d be like, “That’s life.” But everybody does.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so I would say in the broader sense of what the Lord commanded them, it’s kind of wired into us based on the scriptures to know right from wrong, and yeah, the Lord does give higher covenants and commandments to some people as they’re able to accept them, and our doctrine is that everybody eventually becomes aware of this whole thing, whether it’s in mortality or after mortality, but I think it’s accurate. In the broadest sense, the Lord commanded us to be good and be fruitful and do the things that make us better people, and I think that’s wired into everybody. Like, everybody kind of knows what the Lord expects of them, even if the specifics are sometimes doled out when people are ready.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I can subscribe to that wholeheartedly. We should say, as far as canonization goes, that the backstory here is that Franklin D. Richards, he’s an apostle who is mission president over in England, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
In Britain, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In Britain. And he was concerned that there were several choice pieces of literature from Joseph Smith’s day that were becoming really hard to get access to, and so he pulled together what he called this Pearl of Great Price, these little nuggets, little excerpts from the book of Moses. And then this translation of Joseph Smith from the book of Abraham, this was becoming really hard for people to access, and so he wanted to make it accessible to saints in Britain. And so puts it together in this book. He calls it the Pearl of Great Price, and it became really popular in Europe. Saints over in Utah start to hear about this book, and a few people get copies who come over here, and it starts to take off here, too. People say, “We want a copy.” And so they start printing copies in Utah. So it kind of circulates for several decades before it is proposed to be made canon.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So I think that’s kind of a fun backstory here, that it was a mission president apostle wanting the saints in Great Britain to have access to some of these gems that were being harder and harder to find. And that makes its way ultimately into the canon.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And another interesting wrinkle to this story is we sometimes underestimate how much the British saints impacted the church. So Pearl of Great Price first circulates in Britain, and the British saints really love it, and by 1880 most of the British Saints have immigrated to America. I mean, there’s some people that say if you were walking down Salt Lake roads at that time, you’d be more likely to hear a British accent than an American accent. It’s also interesting to me that the British Saints are the one who are kind of raised in this culture where there is a state religion. And the Book of Abraham is our most controversial book, I guess you would say, when it comes to the traditional teachings and theology of Orthodox Christianity. So it’s interesting that the British Saints really like the book of Abraham, because it’s really pushing back against some of the fundamental tenets and, I guess, creeds that most Orthodox Christians believe in.

Scott Woodward:
Well, I guess we should probably talk about those.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s talk about it. So a lot of what we’re doing today we’re stealing from a book called The Pearl of Greatest Price written by Terryl Givens with Brian Hauglid that focuses on, hey, what’s the theological contributions of the Pearl of Great Price, and had some interesting stuff to write about the book of Abraham, but we’re just going to credit them before we do that. So four points: the book of Abraham and why it’s valuable: number 1, the book of Abraham recontextualizes our relationship with God. It really changes our view of God and how and where he exists in the universe.

Scott Woodward:
Changes it meaning from a biblical perspective only?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
No, from an Orthodox Christian perspective.

Scott Woodward:
From an Orthodox Christian perspective, okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Which, to be honest with you, isn’t super biblical, right? I mean—

Scott Woodward:
Them’s fightin‘ words, Casey. Them’s fightin‘ words.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, they’re fightin‘ words, but, I mean, I think most people would say that the creeds were kind of formed after the Bible and were influenced as much by Greek philosophy as they were with the actual text itself. I mean, that’s controversial, but it’s not new. That’s something that Latter-day Saints have argued pretty much from the beginning.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and I would say just for me, it’s been helpful to, like, research the history of that and to find that there was nothing evil intended there. Like, it wasn’t, like, these monks huddled in a corner trying to, like, change, like, the fundamental beliefs of Christianity, right? It was actually good men and women that were trying to get the tenets of Christianity right, because there started to be schisms, right? And so that’s why we got the creeds. It was trying to, like, pin down, especially what do we believe about Jesus and the nature of God and Jesus‘s nature and our relationship to Him? So well-intentioned, but yeah, I think we would say that there are some errors in those creeds.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, we’re not calling out the sincerity of individual Christians.

Scott Woodward:
No. So your claim here, what you’re saying is the book of Abraham recontextualizes our relationship with God vis-á-vis the creeds.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So number 2: The book of Abraham is probably our most valuable document concerning premortality, which is a huge, huge doctrine that vitally affects everything that we see in the world and our whole worldview.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We’ll get to that in a minute. I’m just laying out the reasons here, and then I’ll dive into the specifics.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Number 3: The book of Abraham adds greatly to our understanding of the Abrahamic covenant. It reframes the Abrahamic covenant, gives it a few new twists, and also sort of expands what the Abrahamic covenant means and the idea of God making covenants with Abraham and other people. And fourth: The book of Abraham is vital to the development of temple and temple ordinances.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So let me go through each one. We’ll start with what the book of Abraham teaches about our relationship with God. And honestly, some of the key things that Orthodox Christians believe in, the book of Abraham pushes back against. For instance, one scholar of religion notes that “Today the doctrine,” this is the quote, “the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is regarded as the linchpin of Christianity, the truth on which theism stands or falls.” Now, just to clarify, ex nihilo is the idea that God created everything from nothing: that nothing existed, and God brought it into existence. And, boy, does the book of Abraham push back against that particular idea.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The book of Abraham presents this idea of creation. Abraham 4 spends all its time on creation and talks about creation. The word Terryl Givens uses here is ex materia—that the materials always existed: that God came along and organized the materials into useful forms, and that’s the role that God plays. Now, part of this is valuable to us because instead of placing God outside the universe, like the universe is this fishbowl that God plays around in or puts stuff into, it places God in the universe. And I know that this is an oft-mocked part of our religion because Abraham also goes to great lengths to explain, you know, God lives on this planet near this star, but it places God in as part of the universe. He’s a participant in the universe. He has stake in the universe. He cares about the universe because it’s not some science experiment sitting on his shelf. He lives within the universe and takes an active role in shaping and changing and forming the universe. This is what Terryl Givens writes: “The creative activity consists of reordering, not conjuring out of the void, the physical world.” And Joseph Smith taught this. Joseph Smith, for instance, in his King Follett discourse, talks about how the word “create” does not mean out of nothing. It means to organize. And you can see this in the book of Abraham, where it’s talking about creation and it says, “They went down from the beginning and organized and formed, that is the gods, the heavens and the earth.” So they formed the earth, okay? They took the materials that existed there and brought them into a useful form. That is a big deal. In fact, Terryl Givens says this is an assault on the sovereignty of God in the view of most Christians because the sovereignty of God is a fancy way of basically saying God is everything and knows everything and is everywhere, and we do believe that God is all-powerful, but we don’t think that God is outside the universe. God is inside the universe.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And I think a helpful companion to the book of Abraham chapter 4 would be Doctrine and Covenants 88, where we see a God who infuses his life-giving power into what is already existing, but it’s an otherwise cold, meaningless, entropic existence, right, where it’s just disorder, darkness, chaos, and what God does is imposes his ordered will and light and law, D&C 88 says, into that preexisting disorder, darkness, and chaos. So essentially what God is doing is not creating out of nothing, but he’s giving meaning to what is basically otherwise meaningless. He’s giving life and understanding where there previously was none.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
You know, for instance, like, D&C 88:13, talking about this light called the light of Christ. He says that light “is in all things, [it gives] life to all things, [it’s] the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne . . . in the bosom of eternity.” So this is God who’s giving law and light and order to previously existing stuff, stuff that God ultimately did not create, but as Joseph Smith says in the King Follett discourse, the word “create” there might better be translated “organize.” To order, right? And that’s the language we find in the book of Abraham, probably influenced by Joseph’s Hebrew study up to that point, this idea of God speaks and organizes rather than creates from nothing. That’s an important insight, yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And to speak to a basic idea that Joseph Smith articulates on several occasions, something that has a beginning has an end.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
If something was created out of nothing, it’s going to end, eventually.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s finite. Joseph Smith is saying the materials the universe is made out of are infinite. That they’re eternal.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That they’re co-eternal with God, and they’ve always existed and will always exist, and philosophically that’s kind of a big deal. There’s not an end date assigned to the universe. God can continue to reorganize and create and move things into a higher realm forever and ever—that things aren’t just going to flare out of existence and God is the only thing that it’s eternal. The universe is co-eternal with God.

Scott Woodward:
Oh, the implications of this, like, theologically, philosophically, are so immense, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
They’re so big, because, like, this takes away—with this understanding, the book of Abraham is highlighting that everything is eternal, co-eternal with God. It takes away, like, the capriciousness of God, that sometimes God gets accused of that He’s capricious. Some people will be saved, other people won’t be saved, it’s whether you keep His rules or not. It almost seems like, if He’s calling all the shots, then why not just save everybody?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Otherwise you’re just playing this little, petty game where you’re trying to, you know, just reward those who follow your rules and condemn those who don’t. But in Latter-day Saint theology, that’s not the case, right? We’ve got it pretty well down pat that God does not create ex nihilo, but I’m not sure we’ve fully explored the implications of that understanding in our theology. Like, if there already is preexisting stuff that predates God’s creative interactions with it, then how can we say that there are no conditions that exist outside of God? And then add to that Joseph’s later teachings in Nauvoo about God once being a man who lived on a material earth somewhere in material space who later becomes a god, and I think the only conclusion that is left open to us is that there’s actually, like, a lot of conditions—there’s myriad conditions that exist outside of God. And so God is the author of law in the sense that he’s authoring order and light and governance into spheres that previously hadn’t been governed, and I know this sounds a little esoteric and a little bit out there, but hold on a second. I think this is really important. So God is not capricious in imposing penalties. The natural course of the universe is entropy. I think I’ve heard Terryl Givens talk about it as cosmic entropy, where things—they’ll just happen naturally without God doing anything or anyone doing anything. Like, things just decay. Things just go from order to disorder. They disintegrate. They dissolve. Darkness. Decline. Death. Like, these just are. Like, God’s not the author of those things. And so He’s not entropy-based. He’s negentropic. He’s opposite of entropy. That means He tries to take things from disorder into order.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So the punchline here is that when God gives us laws, He’s trying to teach us how to transcend the natural entropy of the universe, and the covenants that He offers to us give us access to His power so that we can do so. Joseph Smith will later say in Nauvoo—actually, he’ll write in Doctrine and Covenants 132—the truth that anything that’s not sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise will eventually come to naught after the resurrection. That’s not a statement of God’s judgment, that’s a statement of just what is. Like, the eternal nature of the universe is that things will go into dissolution. Relationships don’t automatically transcend death. Like, if you want a relationship sealed for eternity, like, God has to do something. He has to impose His power, His light, His life-giving force, and covenants put us in a position to receive that. So anyway, I’m kind of rambling on here, but, like, the theological implications of a preexisting creation are so massive: that God is working within that rather than He’s the one above it all and pulling all the strings and calling all the shots—like, He’s decidedly not, in Latter-day Saint theology, and I think it’s actually inspiring as to contextualizing the purpose of law, commandments, and covenants that God’s trying to help us out. He’s on our side.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And he wants to teach us how to transcend the entropy that is natural out there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. He’s in the universe with us.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So we haven’t even made it to our second point, which—what the book of Abraham teaches us about ourselves and premortality. So so far we’ve been talking about the eternal nature of God and the eternal nature of matter, but maybe the biggest contribution of the book of Abraham is what it says about the eternal nature of us, where we come from and who we are.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The idea of premortality is hinted at in the Bible and in the revelations of Joseph Smith, but it’s never as clearly explained anywhere as it is in the book of Abraham. I’ll quote Abraham chapter 3, starting in verse 22. You should know this. This was scripture mastery when we were kids growing up.

Scott Woodward:
Back in the day.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Back in the day. I used to have this memorized. I still do a little bit. “Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was; and among all these there were many of the noble and great ones; . . . God saw these souls that they were good, and he stood in the midst of them, and he said: These I will make my rulers; for he stood among those that were spirits, and he saw that they were good; and he said unto me: Abraham, thou art one of them; thou wast chosen before thou wast born.” And when you think about this kid, who—so far the narrative in the book of Abraham has presented him as a good soul, but someone who came from a very messed up family and a messed up society and the Lord’s trying to show him, no, you are good. “You’ve already done good things and proven that you are capable of great and wonderful things” is a powerful message.

Scott Woodward:
You are much more than your environment, right? You were raised in an abusive home, but that does not define you, Abraham.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s a powerful and empowering message to give to people that makes a huge difference.

Scott Woodward:
You’re more than what has happened to you here.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. No matter how messed up your environment is, no matter how messed up your family is, you came from a good home, and you are noble and good. In fact, it goes on to say, “There stood one among them,” this is verse 24, “that was like unto God. . . . he said unto those who were with him: We will go down,” we will make space there, “We will take of these materials, . . . We will make an earth whereon these may dwell; And we will prove . . . herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” So this is curious, too, because it’s also making us co-creators with God. That “we will go down,” and “we will take of these materials,” and “we will make an earth”. That we played a role in creation.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s wild. That’s not anywhere else in scripture, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
That’s hinted at a little bit in the temple. We have Jehovah and Michael working together to create the earth, but this takes it to the nth degree: that the noble and great ones as a group went down and helped to create the world. Like that is—it’s unprecedented in scripture.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And maybe we should express here that we don’t know who the noble and great ones are. We know Abraham’s one of them, but I don’t think it’s too audacious to say many of us could have participated in this process.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Again, it’s changing our relationship with God from sovereign servants, which I’m okay with that relationship, from collaborators: that God isn’t interested in strict rule, telling us exactly what to do and making us into little ants that march in order, but that we become his co-collaborators in the function of the universe and the way things work, in the design of the world that exists around us. And it doesn’t say very much here except that we did this, too, that he invited us to participate. And that’s a God I can appreciate a little bit more: someone that isn’t afraid to collaborate with people or share power, that’s magnanimous, that isn’t the way he’s presented sometimes in polemic literature, that God is cruel and angry and that God is always concerned about mankind gaining too much power, that God had faith enough in us to say, let’s collaborate on this project together.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let’s create this.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I like that view of God. And to be clear, the text itself is saying that a group of noble and great ones went down. We’re not sure who was involved, but we do have modern-day prophets saying things. I remember President Nelson quoting that verse and then saying that group of noble and great ones is us. So, yeah, I mean, who knows exactly who was involved? What’s even more striking and maybe audacious and paradigm-shifting is chapter 4, verse 1, then, where it’s picking up that story and says, “And then the Lord said: Let us go down,” speaking to the group of noble and great ones, “And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth.” Whoa. What did—what did Abraham just call the group of noble and great ones? He called them the Gods. I don’t even know fully what to do with that, but that is a remarkable, paradigm-shifting thought. Like, okay, what is a god? What are the Gods? And if Abraham was among the group of the noble and great ones before he was born, and he was part of that group to help create the earth, then he was part of that group called the Gods. Then maybe I need to rework a little bit when I think about what that word means, but now we’re off into the weeds a little bit.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We are off into the weeds a little bit, but let’s stay there for just a second because how does that reframe Genesis, too? Like, honestly, Genesis does use this “us” and “we” language to describe creation, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And a lot of Christians would assume, oh, this is just the Trinity. This is, you know, the three collaborative beings. But what if the book of Abraham is opening up possibilities? Like, verse 27 of Abraham chapter 4: “So the Gods went down to organize man in their own image, in the image of the Gods to form they him, male and female to form they them.” That little male and female clause right there makes a lot more sense if we’re talking about a group of people, some of whom were female, participating in creation and bringing about the designs of God. That opens a lot of doors to us and maybe makes our conception of the universe a little less patriarchal and more to say, hey, did women play a role in this creation and how it worked?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s a compelling thought.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. At any rate, it goes on to say this: “they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; . . . they who keep not their first estate shall not have glory in the same kingdom . . . those who keep their first estate; and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads forever and ever. And the Lord [God] said: Whom shall I send? And one answered like unto the Son of man: Here am I, send me. And another answered and said: Here am I, send me. And the Lord said: I will send the first. . . . the second was angry, and kept not his first estate; and . . . that day, many followed after him.” That’s probably the most clear explanation of the war in heaven, too, isn’t it? Moses 4:1-5 explains this, but in a little bit more vague way. And then the other texts, like Revelation 12, are very vague, just that there’s a war in heaven and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and were cast out. This is also saying we had a stake in what happened. There was opposition, that God allowed, basically, people to dissent and asked for collaboration—that Jesus’s role was collaborative, that he didn’t basically command Jesus to do this: He said, “Who should I send?” Knowing that the plan was to send Jesus from the beginning, he still allows the Savior to commit himself, and this becomes a larger paradigm where we fit in, where, hey, we had the opportunity to say yes or no. We want to do this, we don’t want to do this.

Scott Woodward:
So you’re saying in verse 28 where it says, “And, at that day, many followed after him,” meaning the angry voice, is highlighting premortal choice in who you wanted to side with in terms of the first or the second volunteer. Is that kind of what you’re saying?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it’s kind of—it’s a prelude to the war in heaven, if you will.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. It’s setting up the beginnings of the war in heaven and the idea that if you’re here on earth, you already made a number of good decisions. You did the right thing. You chose, or at least actively didn’t resist, God in premortality and accepted the plan, and that means you’ve already cleared one of the hurdles, basically, getting back to God—that you’ve made good choices. You’re capable of making good choices, too, while you’re down here on earth. And that’s another powerful teaching also, to basically state that you have volition and choice, that God just doesn’t decree who and what you are. I mean, when you think about it, this is really pushing back against some of those ideas that were prevalent in Europe and America at the time that everything’s preordained and set up. It’s giving us this notion that, no, everything’s not—you have a choice. You can decide what your fate is going to be, and God is going to let you. And, in fact, that might lead us to the last big point, and this is also found in Doctrine and Covenants 93, but Abraham 3:18, okay?

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s talking about the spirits. This is—lead in, this is right before the discussion about intelligences. It says this: “Howbeit . . . he made the greater star.” He’s talking about cosmology and the creator of the universe. How “also, if there be two spirits, and one . . . be more intelligent the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, [they] have no beginning.” That’s the big phrase. “They existed before, they shall have no end, [and] they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.”

Scott Woodward:
So the eternal nature of mankind, that we actually have existed forever.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah, so we’ve already established the book of Abraham teaches God is eternal.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And now it’s reinforcing this idea that we are eternal, too: that something that has a beginning has an end. That if we were created ex nihilo, out of nothing, we will eventually return to nothing. The book of Abraham is underlining this idea that we will exist forever, that we’ve always existed. And in that sense—we’re not as advanced as God, we don’t have the powers that God has, we don’t have the knowledge or the wisdom, but—we are the same type of being as God. Tad Callister likes to phrase it by saying the difference between us of God is not one of kind, it’s one of development. It’s like the difference between an acorn and an oak tree. That’s a powerful, empowering idea that I think is really, really important to the Latter-day Saint viewpoint: that every person you see around you is an eternal being that has always existed and will always exist and has the potential to one day become a being like God themselves.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that—C. S. Lewis says that if you saw them now for who they could eventually be, you’d be strongly tempted to worship them. Yeah, and for the full development of that idea. I think D&C 93 is a great cross-reference, as you’ve mentioned, where Jesus is saying, essentially, you and I are the same kind of being, and the differences between us are in degree, not in kind. Not in category: We are the same category of being. The difference is simply development, and the way you develop is by obeying light and truth—light and truth, or law, that God condescends to give us. That’s how you ascend. That’s how I did it, Jesus says, and that’s how you can do it, too.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And going back to our earlier discussion about what’s the purpose of life, I mean, this is a big deal, too.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
How did this influence Joseph Smith? Joseph Smith makes this statement: he says, “What was the design of the Almighty in making man? It was to exalt him to be as God. The scripture says, ye are gods, and it cannot be broken.” The book of Abraham contributes to that by making us co-eternal with God, establishes that God collaborates with us, that he works with us, that God, rather than just announcing his will and it being done, presents and counsels with us, and that God isn’t so insecure that he’s above counseling with other people, that there’s this kind of collaborative counsel that works together in everything, including the creation of the earth and establishing the purposes of the earth. That’s powerful stuff.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And you also just introduced the paradox, maybe unwittingly, by quoting Joseph Smith there because his quote says, “What was the design of Almighty in making man?” And he goes on with his answer. But at the same time, we’ve just learned that mankind was not ever made. We are eternal beings. So how does Joseph Smith deal with that paradox? Because he believes both of these are true, that God created us, but we are eternal beings who’ve always existed.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Well, I would assume in this context Joseph Smith is using “making” as in “organizing.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because we’re not saying that man can do this by themselves, that they don’t need God’s help, that we’re just so awesome that we’re eventually going to turn out to be like God. That puts God out of the equation, and the book of Abraham is very much concerned with showing us that God is a key figure, the key figure, and Jesus Christ is a key figure in helping us achieve our potential, that Abraham would have been sacrificed on the altar if God hadn’t come along and plucked him out of that environment and showed him who and what he truly was. And God likewise does the same with men and women here on earth. He gives them the scriptures, among which some of the most important writings concerning this are from Abraham to basically show them, here’s what you really are. Here’s your real potential. Here’s what you can be if you trust me, if you have faith in my Son, if you accept his atoning sacrifice, and if you do what I ask you to do.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. And again, that’s not capricious. That’s not God making up rules and saying, whoever’s willing to jump through my hoops, I’ll help you out. Like, this is, like, the nature of the universe. And then our own nature is such that there are certain things that we need to do if we’re going to transcend entropy, if we’re going to transcend to the full potential that we have, the power to become and to have relationships eternalized, to have the material type of being that we are in embodied state, to have that immortalized in a resurrected type of a state, etc. Like, all that needs to happen to us requires us to collaborate and cooperate with God. Like, our covenants are cooperative so that God can give us these gifts in certain ways to help us transcend entropy. Like, if we go outside of those bounds, there’s not much God can do for us or with us.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So we have to collaborate. Like, from the very beginning, as you’ve highlighted, God has been collaborating with us, and he continues to ask us to collaborate with him through making and keeping covenants so as to achieve our full potential, and I think that’s huge.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And again, it makes God instead of this clockmaker that kind of made the clock and wound it up and is just sitting there watching it run down, into a mentor. He’s in the mix, right? He’s invested in us because He’s one of us, and he sees our potential and wants to help us. He’s not just sitting outside the universe, waiting for the clock to run down. He’s in the mix. He’s part of it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and to that point, like, here’s just one more thought from Joseph Smith and we can move on. But he said, “God Himself finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent he saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
“The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences that they may be exalted with himself so that they might have one glory upon another and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits.” That’s just a great, I think, punctuation for what we’ve been trying to say. Joseph said it best.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s good stuff. It’s a nice segue into point three, which is what the book of Abraham adds to our understanding about the Abrahamic covenant. So it’s kind of like we have all these cosmological ideas about what a person is and what their potential is, and then Abraham is sort of used as our example of how God can work with an individual. Kid that comes from a screwed up family and a messed up environment, so screwed up that his dad tries to sacrifice him.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
A town so messed up that he is, you know, almost executed for blasphemy for saying things like, hey, maybe we shouldn’t be sacrificing virgins and stuff like that. The first point that we would make is this: Here’s the opening of the book of Abraham, and listen carefully to how he changes this: Abraham 1:2-3, he says, “finding there was greater happiness and peace and rest for me, I sought . . . the blessings of the fathers and the right whereunto I should be ordained to administer the same; having been myself a follower of righteousness, desiring also to be one who possessed great knowledge, and to be a greater follower of righteousness, and to possess . . . greater knowledge, . . . to be a father of many nations, a prince of peace, and desiring to receive instructions, and to keep the commandments of God, I became a rightful heir, a High Priest, holding the right belonging to the fathers. It was conferred upon me from the fathers; it came down from the fathers, from the beginning of time, yea, . . . from the beginning, or before the foundation of the earth, down to the present time, even the right of the firstborn, or the first man, who is Adam, or first father, through the fathers unto me.” So Abraham adds in this helpful explanation to basically say, what you’re seeing God do with me in this narrative, the covenant that he establishes, is not the only time or even the first time God has done this. And Abraham knew this. Abraham knew that God had made similar covenants with all the fathers, going back to Adam, you can at least argue here. So it makes the Abrahamic covenant special in the sense that Abraham’s writing it down in detailed terms, but it also sort of expands the idea of an Abrahamic covenant to say, God did this before. He will do it after. He will do it with men and women in our day, which he does.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That’s sort of a big deal.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, the pattern of scripture is that God leverages the faithfulness of the few to bless the many: that by certain faithful individuals like Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, because of their faithfulness, God binds himself by covenant to bless multitudes. And Abraham’s probably the best example of that where he’s talking about because of your faithfulness, Abraham, I’m going to make a great nation of thee, that through your seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed, right? He binds himself by covenant with Abraham because of Abraham’s faithfulness to bless, essentially, the whole world, honestly. And that’s made very transparent in the book of Abraham. It’s clear in the book of Genesis as well, but Abraham just adds a nice, fine point to that.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So it’s interesting that this kind of does what the book of Moses does, where it not only elaborates on Abraham, makes Abraham a Christian, and it also expands the ideas linked to Abraham back to Adam. And here’s another thing that it adds to: If you’re a student of the Bible, you’ll know that the Abrahamic covenant is spelled out in the book of Genesis, but it’s spelled out as mentioning two main blessings, and just to simplify, the two P’s: posterity, that Abraham would have a posterity as numerous as the stars of heaven, and secondly, property, that Abraham was going to inherit the land of Canaan. What the book of Abraham does is it adds a third P to the Abrahamic covenant, and that is priesthood. Priesthood. So look at this: this is Abraham chapter 2. We’re going to start in verse 8. And you’re going to see here the classics that are in the book of Genesis of posterity and property. In fact, it starts out, verse 8. Abraham 2:8: “My name is Jehovah, . . . I know the end from the beginning; therefore my hand shall be over thee. . . . I will make of thee a great nation, . . . I will bless thee above measure, and [shall] make thy name great among all nations, and thou shalt be a blessing unto thy seed after thee, [and] in [thy] hands . . . shall [they] bear this ministry and Priesthood unto all nations; And I will bless them through thy name; for as many as receive this Gospel shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed, and shall rise up and bless thee, as their father.” So you can see there posterity, right?

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But he’s talking about posterity in two different ways: Number 1, Abraham’s going to have a lot of kids, and there’s no doubt that that’s true. The whole Bible is the story.

Scott Woodward:
“I will make of thee a great nation,” right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That line right there, okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Abraham’s going to have an innumerable posterity. But he introduces a second way that a person can become a part of Abraham’s posterity. “As many as receive [the] Gospel,” this is verse 10, “shall be called after thy name, and shall be accounted thy seed, and shall rise up and bless thee, as their father.” So what if you’re not a literal blood descendant of Abraham? This kind of expands the Abrahamic covenant beyond the ways it’s sometimes been misused as only applying to the literal blood descendants of Abraham. Now, Abraham lived so long ago and had such a numerous posterity that it’s not that outlandish to say most people probably are linked to Abraham through blood. But this is just saying it’s not your lineage, it’s your choices that determine God’s willingness to make a covenant with you. If you received the gospel, bam, you are a child of Abraham. And look at how he adds the priesthood in here, verse 11: “I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee (that is, in thy Priesthood) and in thy seed,” and look at how the Lord defines Abraham’s seed, “(that is, thy Priesthood), . . . I give unto thee a promise that this right shall continue in thee, and in thy seed after thee (that is to say, the literal seed, or the seed of the body),” so he’s not downplaying the importance of a literal posterity, “shall all the families of the earth be blessed, even with the blessings of the Gospel, which are the blessings of salvation, even of life eternal.” Everybody that accepts the gospel and gains priesthood will be seen as a descendant of Abraham, that he’s going to be associated with that. And that’s really cool. It takes away what could sometimes be seen as a racist component, which is you have to be of this lineage to get a blessing, and basically expands it to say, no, you don’t have to necessarily be of the lineage. You just accept the covenant, and then you are treated. It’s a royal family that anybody can join, essentially, which really takes the uncomfortableness out of having a royal family.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The book of Abraham democratizes that idea and basically says, what makes you special is your choices, not the lineage you were born into.

Scott Woodward:
And I think in the book of Galatians, like, Paul makes a big deal about this, because in his day, in the first century, as the gospel is transitioning from just going out to the house of Israel, like, highlighted in Matthew 10, to now going out to the whole world, as Jesus says in Matthew 28, this is all part of transitioning from the old covenant with Israel to the new covenant in Christ’s blood—maybe we need to spend, like, five hours talking about what that all means, but essentially during that time post resurrection, now the gospel is to go to all the world. Paul is making a case for Gentiles coming into the covenant family of Abraham, and he says exactly what you’re saying here, Casey, is that when you accept Christ through baptism, you now become an heir, an heir of all of the promises made to Abraham. You become a child of the covenant, even if you’re a Gentile, because you received Jesus, and Jesus is the preeminent seed of Abraham. So when you receive Jesus and become part of his family, you’re now incorporated into all of the promises that God made to Abraham.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That’s a big deal. Ultimately the heirs of the celestial kingdom are part of that family, and so—sometimes this is called the patriarchal order, and that this little group—like, when he says in verse 11, “in thy seed (that is, thy Priesthood),” “thy priesthood” here is this—Abraham’s own little family subset of the patriarchal order. In his seed, that is, those in his patriarchal priesthood order, those who descend from him, through them shall all the families of the earth be blessed with the blessings of the everlasting covenant. Blessings of salvation, life eternal. So they’re going to, in some ways, be the vehicle by which everybody is incorporated into the covenant family of God, who become heirs through this patriarchal order.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
It’s theologically kind of dense here, but the upshot is exactly what you said, that it’s not about who you descend from physically and lineally. What matters is who you decide to follow. If you sign up to follow Jesus Christ, you will be, by the act of your baptism, incorporated into the family of Abraham, and therefore you become an heir to all the promises that God made to him. That’s laid out really clear here in Abraham.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Let’s back this up by words of a modern prophet.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
There’s probably not a president of the church since Joseph Smith that’s talked more about the Abrahamic covenant than Russell M. Nelson.

Scott Woodward:
True.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He gave a great talk, October 2011 General Conference, called “Covenants,” and this is his summary. He says some good stuff here and just says it with a little bit more authority than you or I can. He says, “The covenant God made with Abraham and later reaffirmed with Isaac and Jacob is of transcendent significance. . . . Some of us are the literal seed of Abraham;” President Nelson teaches. “Others are gathered into his family by adoption. The Lord makes no distinction. Together we receive these promised blessings—if we seek the Lord and obey his commandments. But if we don’t, we lose the blessings of the covenant. To assist us, His Church provides patriarchal blessings to give each recipient a vision for his or her future as well as a connection with the past, even a declaration of lineage back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Now, he invokes patriarchal blessings here, but because of the book of Abraham, we would point out that patriarchal blessings never say—well, I guess sometimes they do say you’re a literal descendant of Abraham.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But if they don’t—

Scott Woodward:
Who cares?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—who cares, basically.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It doesn’t matter.

Scott Woodward:
It mattereth not, yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. You can be part of the royal family of the earth, even if you’re not a literal blood descendant of Abraham. It doesn’t matter.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
What matters is the choices you make.

Scott Woodward:
That’s right. And this royal family of earth is another way of saying those who will inherit the Celestial Kingdom, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And it’s not an exclusive club.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Anyone who wants to be part of that family can be adopted into it by deciding to follow Jesus Christ with your whole heart. And that’s the beauty of it. Like, you get to choose if you want to be part of this royal family. It’s beautiful.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
All right, so reason number four, and this is the book of Abraham’s connection to the temple. And this one, we’re doing a little bit of detective work, but if you start to look at the timeline of when Joseph Smith is working on the book of Abraham, there’s some strong temporal connections. The timing just lines up very well. For instance, most scholars believe there’s two phases of translation with the book of Abraham. The first is July to late November 1835. And we don’t know, but most scholars believe that’s when about Abraham 1-2 is translated. July to November 1835 is right when we’re getting close to the completion of the Kirtland Temple.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Kirtland Temple’s dedicated in March 1836, but before the Kirtland Temple’s dedicated, Joseph Smith introduces the very first sort of temple ordinance, which is called the endowment. And we need to do a whole other podcast on this, but the Kirtland endowment is different than the endowment we know right now. It’s probably more close to the initiatory ordinances in the temple.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But a person is washed and anointed and given blessings. That is done about two months after Joseph Smith is done with his first phase of translation. And then, in the temple, Joseph Smith notes that when one of the three heavenly messengers appeared, Jesus appears, then Moses, Elias, and Elijah, that Elias brought forth the keys of the dispensation of the gospel of Abraham. So Joseph Smith is already keyed into this Abraham idea and the idea of receiving a blessing, making a covenant, and having promises made to you, when Elias shows up and says, yeah, I’ll give you the keys to do that. Now, most scholars believe the second phase of translation happens in Nauvoo. And again, there’s not total consensus on this. There’s a small group that thinks everything was translated in 1835. But here’s the evidence: When Joseph Smith gets there, the minutes of the high council June 1840, Joseph Smith says he has a desire to, “engage more particularly in the translating of Egyptian records.” Then, about a year later, in August 1841, he’s speaking to—a discourse. He says he’s looking forward to having time to, “attend to the business of translating.” Makes it sound like he’s working on the book of Abraham again. Again, some people think he’s just refining what he’s already translated in 1835.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm. But either way, it’s on his mind, right? That’s what matters.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s on his mind.

Scott Woodward:
Okay.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s thinking about it, right? He’s either translating Abraham 3 and 4 directly, which are those key theological texts we’ve been talking about—

Scott Woodward:
Or revising them.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—or he’s refining them, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So in 1842, Joseph Smith takes over as editor of the Church periodical Times and Seasons, and that’s where the book of Abraham is published in three separate installments. So the book of Abraham, first installment, Abraham 1:1 through 2:18 and Facsimile 1 are published in March 1842.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
A second installment of Abraham 2:19 through 5:21 and Facsimile 2 is published in March 15, 1842. The third installment is Facsimile 3. That’s published without any text from the book of Abraham on the 16th of May 1842. Now, what’s going on during all these times? It’s the spring of 1842. If we go back and look at other things happening in Joseph Smith’s journal from the time period, it notes that the first full endowment is introduced May 4th through 5th, 1842. That’s right smack dab in the middle of the publication of the book of Abraham, and the endowment, as those that have been endowed will be familiar with, talks all about ideas found in the book of Abraham: the idea that creation was collaborative, that it happened among a group of people and not solely as God acting as a single figure. It talks about God making covenants with people. In the temple, Adam and Eve are presented as kind of the representatives of all men and women, but it’s presenting this idea of covenants that’s there. And finally, the idea of posterity, endless priesthood . . . These are ideas that are discussed in the temple as well, which seem to be really tied back to the book of Abraham. So again, there’s just this kind of temporal chronology where, what’s Joseph Smith reading when the endowment is received and when the first endowments are performed out of the book of Abraham?

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Let me quote here from the book we’ve been referencing, Pearl of Greatest Price. They write, “Temple theology provides a master plan that plots cosmic time and heavenly space and offers a means of traversing the chasm that impedes human union with the divine. This is how Joseph Smith conceived of his project for a reconstituted temple theology, and the book of Abraham was key to its articulation.” So I think you could argue that all the ideas we’ve been talking about today kind of come together in the temple and are presented in this beautiful, really succinct form. There’s a temporal tie-in. This is what Joseph Smith is reading and working on when he receives the temple endowment, and all the ideas are basically there. All the puzzle pieces, or at least some of the most vital ones, are found within the book of Abraham—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—that then go on to constitute the ceremonies, the ordinances that are performed within the temple.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I’m comfortable with saying that the book of Abraham was a springboard to what we have in the temple, but clearly not its only source.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
But an influence, an influence to be sure.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And yeah, I like that a lot. I think when you read the book of Moses you see a lot of temple stuff that’s not in the book of Abraham, particularly Adam and Eve’s journey, right, which is more well articulated in the book of Moses than the book of Abraham. But yeah, this—things you’ve highlighted, the creation, the collaborative nature of creation and underscoring the crucial nature of covenant, I think that is highlighted very well in the book of Abraham.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
“Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me, let me, let me sum up.”

Scott Woodward:
“Let me sum up.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Here’s the conclusion. When we’re talking about the book of Abraham, don’t get so caught up in the weeds of the facsimiles and the papyri and everything that you miss the text and how important the text is. The text is a big deal, and we’ll summarize the points that we’ve made. Number 1, it makes God part of the universe, not a being outside of it. It introduces the idea of spiritual creation, that God counsels with people when it comes to creation, that he’s, like you said, not capricious. He doesn’t tell us what to do, He collaborates with us, even in something as significant as creation, and it makes us co-collaborators with God in the plan of salvation. God, of course, wrote the plan and knows the end from the beginning, but he’s more than willing to bring us into it. It shows that the Abrahamic covenant, that any person can enter into it, regardless of their lineage. It’s about choice, not lineage. Finally, it lays the foundation and presents some of the key ideas that allow us to create the temple, where we learn the most important truths about the plan of salvation and come to know the purpose of things. So I guess we’re circling our discussion back to this idea of the purpose of life, which the Gospel Topics essay says the book of Abraham states more clearly than maybe any other place in scriptures: why we’re here, what the purpose of our life is and what ultimately our potential is if we are faithful, if we rely on the merits of Christ and trust and put faith in Him and follow His instructions.

Scott Woodward:
What a book.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, excellent thoughts. Thanks, Casey. I think that was worth doing another episode on, so appreciate you making this happen.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Well, thank you for being patient with me, because like I said, I think people come sometimes to our podcast to kind of hear the controversy, but they also need to understand the beauty. I think we have that on our little podcast statement, don’t we? That we deal with the complexities and the beauty?

Scott Woodward:
And the beauties, there you go.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And this is beautiful, empowering, wonderful stuff that any woman or man could listen to and hold their head up a little bit higher and have a little bit more faith and hope in who and what they are and what God intends to do with them.

Scott Woodward:
Theological implications that the book of Abraham introduces are profound and worth pondering well beyond this podcast, so thanks for sticking with us, everybody, and happy pondering.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Happy pondering.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode we’re excited to take your questions and ask them to Dr. Kerry Muhlestein, an Egyptologist and expert on the Book of Abraham. If you’d like your question asked, again, please submit it as concisely as possible, along with your name and where you’re from, to podcasts@scripturecentral.org before October 19th, 2023. If you’re enjoying Church History Matters, we’d appreciate it if you could take a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral. org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. And while we try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.