Friday, August 12, 2022

Mark Ashurst-McGee on Joseph Smith as "Baurak Ale"

  

In the funeral sermon, Phelps stated that Joseph was “one of the holy ones commissioned by his father among the royal seven, when the high council of heaven set them apart.” This “royal seven” apparently corresponded with the seven heads of gospel dispensations in LDS theology and with the seven archangels of Jewish legend. In the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, Phelps used “Baurak Ale,” the name of one of the seven archangels, as another code name for Joseph (see Doctrine and Covenants 103:21 in editions issued between 1835 and 1971 inclusive). Although the Doctrine and Covenants used “Gazelam” as a code name for Smith, he really was named Gazelem. Similarly, although “Baurak Ale” was used a a code name for Smith, he may have believed he really was Baurak el. Just as Joseph identified himself as Gazelem and as the key-holder of the last dispensation, he apparently identified himself as the archangel Baurak el. Smith claimed that he received visits from the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. He identified Michael and Gabriel as the dispensation heads Adam and Noah. He apparently drew a correspondence between the archangels of classical angelology and the major figures of his own dispensational view of world history. As the head of the “dispensation of the fulness of times,” it made sense for Joseph to count himself among the archangels. Joseph is also called “Baurach Ale” in the privacy of his own journal, where there is no need or use for secrecy (Am American Prophet’s Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, ed. Scott H. Faulring [Salt Lake City: Signature Books in Association with Smith Research Associates, 1989], 416). The name of this angel had various spellings, the most common of which were Barchiel and Barkayal (Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 224). The name translates into English as “lightning of God,” which compares with Phelps’s translation of Gazelem as “the Light of the Lord.” The Doctrine and Covenants’s spelling “Baurak Ale” is unique and seems to manifest Joseph’s study of the Hebrew language. It correctly parses “Baurak” = lightning, from “Ale” = el = God. Also, whereas most spellings had apparently contracted a form of the words for lightning, the Mormon spelling includes the letters “ur” in “Baurak.” “Ur,” as in “Urim,” means “light.”

 

Source: Mark Ashurst-McGee, "A Pathway to Prophethood: Joseph Smith Junior as Rodsman, Village Seer, and Judeo-Christian Prophet" (M.A. thesis., Utah State University, 2000), p. 272 n. 395; the “funeral sermon” refers to William Wines Phelps, “The Funeral Sermon,” Ms. Salt Lake City, 12 June 1866, LDS Church Archives.

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