Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 Volume 18 Number 1 Article 19 2006 Mormonism as a Restoration Daniel C. Peterson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Peterson, Daniel C. (2006) "Mormonism as a Restoration," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011: Vol. 18 : No. 1 , Article 19. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol18/iss1/19 This Mormon Studies is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011 by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Title Mormonism as a Restoration Author(s) Daniel C. Peterson Reference FARMS Review 18/1 (2006): 389–417. ISSN 1550-3194 (print), 2156-8049 (online) Abstract This article portrays the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints as a restoration of ancient Christianity and explains why Mormonism is not simply a generic sect. Mormonism as a Restoration Daniel C. Peterson n his 1996 book on The Rise of Christianity, the noted sociologist IRodney Stark repeatedly uses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints as a model for understanding the growth of the early Chris- tian movement. The church, he has written elsewhere, represents “that Frequent reference will be made in what follows to several surveys, including Noel B. Reynolds, ed., Book of Mormon Authorship: New Light on Ancient Origins [hereafter Authorship] (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1982); John L. Sorenson and Melvin J. Thorne, eds., Rediscovering the Book of Mormon [hereafter Rediscovering] (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1991); John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon [hereafter Reexploring] (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1992); Noel B. Reynolds, ed., Book of Mormon Authorship Revisited: The Evidence for Ancient Origins [hereafter Authorship Revisited] (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1997); John W. Welch and Melvin J. Thorne, eds., Pressing Forward with the Book of Mormon: The FARMS Updates of the 1990s [hereafter Pressing Forward] (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999); Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and John W. Welch, eds., Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon [hereafter Echoes and Evidences] (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002); also the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. The acronymFARMS refers to Brigham Young University’s Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, now a part of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship; Insights is the Foundation’s newsletter. The essays I cite should not be regarded as an exhaustive list of books and articles contending for the truth of Latter-day Saint claims. At most, it constitutes a representative sample of certain strands of argument. The relevant literature is, by now, considerable. And, virtually without exception, each cited reference here offers further primary data and bibliographical hints for continued pursuit of the topics mentioned. 1. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Move­ ment Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). 390 • The FARMS Review 18/1 (2006) incredibly rare event: the rise of a new world religion” ; the Latter-day Saints “stand on the threshold of becoming the first major faith to appear on earth since the Prophet Mohammed rode out of the desert.” Early in the twentieth century, the famous historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer took a year’s leave from the University of Berlin to study the Latter-day Saints in Utah. “Mormonism . is not just another of countless sects,” he concluded, “but a new revealed religion. What in the study of other revealed religions can only be surmised after painful research is here directly accessible in reliable witnesses. Hence the origin and history of Mormonism possess great and unusual value for the student of religious history.” Such comments do not surprise Latter-day Saints. From the begin- ning, they have understood their church and the doctrines it teaches as restorations of ancient originals, and most specifically of a Hebraic Christianity as yet largely untouched by Greek philosophy. “Mormon- ism, a nickname for the real religion of the Latter-day Saints, does not profess to be a new thing,” said Lorenzo Snow, the fifth prophet- president of the church, at the dawn of the twentieth century, except to this generation. It proclaims itself as the original plan of salvation, instituted in the heavens before the world was, and revealed from God to man in different ages. That Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and other ancient worthies had this religion successively, in a series of dispensations, we, as a peo- ple, verily believe. To us, the gospel taught by the Redeemer in the meridian of time was a restored gospel, of which, however, He was the author, in His pre-existent state. Mormonism, in short, is the primitive Christian faith restored, the ancient . Rodney Stark, “The Rise of a New World Faith,” Review of Religious Research 26/1 (September 1984): 18–27, at 18, 19. Compare Rodney Stark, “Modernization and Mormon Growth: The Secularization Thesis Revisited,” in Contemporary Mormonism: Social Science Perspectives, ed. Marie Cornwall, Tim B. Heaton, and Lawrence A. Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 13–23. Eduard Meyer, Ursprung und Geschichte der Mormonen (Halle: Niemeyer, 1912), 2. For a critical evaluation of Meyer’s work on the Latter-day Saints, see James K. Lyon, “Mormonism and Islam through the Eyes of a ‘Universal Historian,’ ” BYU Studies 40/4 (2001): 221–36. Mormonism as a Restoration (Peterson) • 391 gospel brought back again—this time to usher in the last dis- pensation, introduce the Millennium, and wind up the work of redemption as pertaining to this planet. During their trek to the West, Latter-day Saints were the Camp of Israel, led by an American Moses, Brigham Young. The initial pioneer companies crossed the Mississippi without getting their feet wet, aided by an ice bridge that seemed to them like the “dry ground through the midst of the sea” that enabled the Israelites to escape the armies of pharaoh. Many later recalled miraculous supplies of quail and of a substance called “honeydew,” reminiscent of the biblical “manna,” that, as in the story of ancient Israel’s exodus, saved them from starvation (see Exodus 16). The Great Basin is studded with Old Testament place names such as Enoch, Ammon, Manassa, Moab, Ephraim, Ophir, Goshen, Mount Nebo, Samaria, and Zion, names reflecting that self-understanding. Temples and tabernacles ornament their landscape. Prophets, seers, apostles, deacons, priests, bishops, and patriarchs, apportioned between two orders of priesthood named after the Old Testament figures Aaron and Melchizedek, are among their ordained officers. When they found a river draining from a freshwater lake into a huge body of saltwater, they naturally called it the Jordan. In the view of those who led it and participated in it, the Mormon settling of the Intermountain West—by an influx of English, . The Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, ed. Clyde J. Williams (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1984), 100. Compare Joseph Smith’s remark in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1972), 59–61, and Brigham Young’s comments in Journal of Discourses, 5:229, 10:324, and 13:269. The early Christians likewise believed that the “gospel” they knew had been revealed previously to promi- nent figures among the Hebrews. See, for instance, 1 Corinthians 10:1–4; Galatians 3:8; Hebrews 3:6–17, 4:2; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.4.14–15. See, for example, the 14 January 1847 revelation received by Brigham Young and canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 136; see also Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985). The biblical account occurs in Exodus 14. The phrase quoted comes from 14:16. Lee A. Palmer, Aaronic Priesthood through the Centuries (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1964), a textbook formerly used for church instruction, and John A. Tvedtnes, The Church of the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1980), will serve to illustrate a very strong version of the claim of structural continuity between ancient Israel, the early Christian church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 392 • The FARMS Review 18/1 (2006) Scandinavian, German, and other pioneers—was a literal gathering of modern Israel from its lengthy dispersion. The authority to initiate and guide this gathering was conferred upon Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery, Latter-day Saints believe, through a visit by Moses to their temple in Kirtland, Ohio, in April 1836. Even today, the return of the Jews to Palestine and the continued remarkable missionary success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are regarded as facets of the same ongoing process. But it is not Latter-day Saints alone who recognize resemblances between their church and more ancient movements. For Joseph Smith, as the great German social theorist Max Weber recognized, “resembled, even in matters of detail, Muhammad and above all the Jewish prophets.” 0 Similarly, the non-Mormon Old Testament scholar Lester L. Grabbe has recently argued that an understanding of Joseph Smith can shed light . The theme recurs constantly in such accounts of the westward trek as Wallace Stegner, The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); William Mulder, Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia (1957; repr., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press and BYU Studies, 2000); and Eugene E. Campbell, Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West, 1847– 1869 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988).