.
. . it was a passage in the 1830 Enoch text that first seems to have fired the
interest and imagination of early Saints, leading to both poetry and theological
development on the subject of preexistence. In Joseph Smith’s account, Enoch
learns in a vision about “the spirits that God had created,” is told clearly
and unambiguously, “I am God; I made the world, and men before they were in the
flesh” (Moses 6:51). We didn’t need the Smith papers to be reminded of this
passage. But we did to learn of its impact, which two documents illuminate. The
first, dated to March 1832, was “A Sample of pure language,” in which the name
of God is given as Awman, or “the being which made all things in its parts.”
And the “children of men,” it went onto say, are “the greatest parts of Awman”
(“A Sample of Pure Language Given by Joseph the Seer,” Kirtland Revelation
Book 1, circa March 1832). The phrasing might not of itself have suggested
a premortal genealogy; together with a second revelation, however, the text
points quite clearly to a conception of human spirits as emanating from God.
Little is known of the context in which the related revelation, dated 27
February 1833, was pronounced. An undated broadside of a poetic rendering of
the revelation indicates the original revelation was “sung in tongues by Elder
D. W. Patton . . . and interpreted by Elder S[idney] Rigdon” (“Mysteries of
God,” Broadside Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah). Recorded in the hand of Frederick G. Williams, the
translation of an instance of “tongue-singing,” is clearly based on the 1830
prophecy of Enoch. In this song, Enoch (all spellings as original) "saw
the begining the ending of man he saw the time when Adam his father was made
and he saw that he was in eternity before a grain of dust in the balance was
weighed he saw that he emenated and came down from God" (“Sang by the gift
of Tongues and Translated,” Kirtland Revelation Book 2 [27 February 1833]).
The
likelihood that the Awan revelation and the Enoch hymn were together pivotal in
concretizing the idea of pre-existence is supported by the fact that when an
anonymous writer, perhaps W. W. Phelps, published in the church paper a poetic
celebration of pre-existence in May 1833, it bore the marks of these two
sources. Tellingly, Smith unambiguously affirmed the eternal pre-existence of
human spirits early this same month, declaring that “Man was also in the
beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or
made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:38). Yet Phelps published his poetic
declaration based not on the definitive revelation of Smith, but on the hymn of
Enoch:
Before
the mountains rais'd their heads,
Or
the small dust of balance weigh'd.
With
God he saw his race began,
And
from him emanated man,
And
with him did in glory dwell,
Before
there was an earth or hell. (emphasis added) (“Songs of Zion," Evening
and Morning Star 1, no. 12 [May 1833]: 97)
The
importance of the Awan and Enoch texts in founding the first clear
understanding of preexistence is further evident in the fact that Parley Pratt
also relied upon these two texts, invoking both the language of the Enoch hymn
and the imagery of the Awman revelation in his 1838 linkage of theosis and
premortality, wherein he argued that “the redeemed . . . return to the fountain
and become part of the great all, from which they emanated” (Parley P. Pratt, Mormonism
Unveiled: Zion’s Watchman Unmasked [New York: Pratt & Fordham, 1838],
27). So we see in Pratt yet another link in the chain and influence that began
with the Enoch text, showing it to be the version of preexistence that
resonated widely in the early church, both doctrinally and artistically.
(Terryl Givens, The Prophecy of Enoch as Restoration Blueprint [Leonard
J. Arrington Mormon History Lecture Series No. 18; Logan, Utah: Utah State
University Press, 2012], 6-7)
