Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Terryl L. Givens on the Influence of the Enoch Texts in the Book of Moses on the Development of Premortality in early LDS History

  

. . . 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)