Bees and Beehives among the Ancient Maya

Some critics of the Book of Mormon argue that its mention of bees is an anachronism, as there were no bees in Mesoamerica during the time of the Book of Mormon (e.g. Problems with the Book of Mormon by Catholic Answers; click here for a refutation of this tract by Jeff Lindsay). However, such an argument is a non sequitur for two reasons:

1. The Book of Mormon never mentions bees in a New World context, only an Old (Ether 2:3), and

2. Mesoamerica did know of bees as well as bee-keeping itself during the time of the Book of Mormon.

In a recent paper by Jaroslaw Zrałka, Christophe Helmke, Laura Sotelo, and Wiesław Koszkul, The Identification of a Beehive and the Identification of Apiaries Among the Ancient Maya serves as another nail in the coffin the bees were unknown in Mesoamerica during Book of Mormon times. As the authors note at the conclusion:

Based on ethnohistorical data, we know that beekeeping constituted an important activity among the Maya, especially in Yucatan.

Jennifer Marie Creamer and D. Charles Pyle on Jeremiah 10:11

Thus shall you say to them: Let the gods, who did not make heaven and earth, perish from the earth and from under these heavens. (Jer 10:11 1985 JPS Tanakh)

This verse, written in Aramaic unlike the rest of the book of Jeremiah, is seen by most scholars as a later interpolation. While I am not dogmatic, that is the position, I hold to, too. For more, see:

Brief Note on Jeremiah 10:11

Notwithstanding, in the interest of fairness, the following from Jennifer Marie Creamer (adjunct professor of New Testament at the Boston campus of Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminary) presents her case that the verse is probably original to Jeremiah:

Verse 11 appears in Aramaic, rather than Hebrew, in the Masoretic Text. This abrupt change of language for a single verse has led some to question the integrity of the text (Craigie, Kelley, & Drinkard, 1991:160). Garrett Reid argues that Jeremiah 10:11 is a genuine part of the Masoretic Text, against those who surmise that the use of Aramaic indicates an interpolation or gloss. He proposes that structural evidence boosts the authenticity of the text: the verse sits in the apex of a chiastic parallelism (Reid, 2006:229). The translation of Jeremiah 10:11 into Greek and its inclusion in the Septuagint also may attest to its genuineness. But this still does not answer the question, why does it appear in Aramaic in the Masoretic Text? F.B. Huey suggests that it may have retained the Aramaic for emphasis (Huey, 1993:127). If a proverb, then the concept that false gods “did not make the heaven and the earth” would have been a well-known idea among the Israelites. Craigie, Kelley, and Drinkard affirm that the presence of Aramaic in this verse “confirms that the passage was addressed to the exiles, for Aramaic was the language of the land where they were exiled” (Craigie, Kelly, & Drinkard, 1991:160).

The Targum of Jeremiah surrounds Jeremiah 10:11 with additional text to suggest that this verse originally may have been part of a letter sent to the exiles by Jeremiah (Craigie, Kelley, & Drinkard, 1991:160; McKane, 1986:225; Reid, 2006:233):

This is a copy of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent to the remnant of the elders of the Exile who were in Babylon. “If the nations among whom you are should say to you, Worship the idols, O house of Israel: thus you shall answer and thus you shall say to them: ‘The idols which you worship are idols in which there is no profit. They cannot bring down rain from heaven, and they cannot make fruits sprout forth from the earth. They are those who worship them shall perish from the earth, and shall be destroyed from under these heavens.’” (Hayward, 1987:79)

In this Targum, Jeremiah 10:22 comprises the content of what the Israelites were instructed to say to their Babylonian captors. It is an anti-idolatry polemic.

Whether verse 11 was originally part of a letter to the exiles, as the Targum suggests, or a proverb, as Huey suggests, or both, the presence of Aramaic in the Masoretic Text suggests that Jeremiah intended this anti-idolatry message to extend further than his Israelite audience. In the words of Reid, “it is a capsule worldview polemic for the people of God living in a pagan culture” (Reid, 2006:232). A polemic against the idolatry of the nations is given to Israel in the lingua franca of the nations so that they may proclaim it cross-culturally (Reid, 2006:237-38). (Jennifer Marie Creamer, God as Creator in Acts 17:24: An Historical-Exegetical Study [Africanus Monograph Series vol. 2; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf & Stock, 2017], 69-70)

Some critics of Latter-day Saint theology often use this passage against our belief in the plurality of gods and robust deification. Notwithstanding, even allowing for the verse to be original to the book of Jeremiah, it is not problematic to our theology. As D. Charles Pyle wrote:

. . . the phrase “from the earth, and from under these heavens” plainly refers to the here and the now, or life on this earth and under this sky, and as the context shows, it is referring to the idols and graven images of the nations rather than those who would become gods through the grace and atonement of Christ, or who already were gods and, hence, in heaven (critics of course also would deny this). But the passage also nowhere states that the gods who are in heaven would perish. Nor does this passage specify that there were no other gods under God in heaven (And we know that this is the case for the Bible refers to God as the God of gods. Just as he is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and we know that other lords and other kings are real beings, so other gods also must in like manner exist). And nothing within this passage affirms that God cannot make other gods and enthrone them in heaven, like the early Christians believed (and also the Latter-day Saints). (D. Charles Pyle,  I Have Said Ye are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and Supplemented) [CreateSpace, 2018], 308)

Previously in his excellent book, Pyle noted:

 . . . God several times is referred to in the Bible as the “God of gods” (Deuteronomy 10:17; Joshua 22:22; Psalms 136:2; Daniel 2:47; 11:36) just as he is spoken of as “King of kings and Lord of lords” in the Bible. We know that there really are other kings and other lords over which God is both King and Lord. These beings really exist and existed. So it is with the gods in heaven over whom God is God. (Ibid., 80-81, note a)

  

God's Knowledge of counterfactuals and contingent foreknowledge in D&C 5:26-35

While reading section 5 of the Doctrine and Covenants this morning,  the following passage stood out to me:

And I the Lord command him, my servant Martin Harris, that he shall say no more unto them concerning these things, except he shall say: I have seen them, and they have been shown unto me by the power of God; and these are the words which he shall say. But if he deny this he will break the covenant which he has before covenanted with me, and behold, he is condemned. And now, except he humble himself and acknowledge unto me the things that he has done which are wrong, and covenant with me that he will keep my commandments, and exercise faith in me, behold, I say unto him, he shall have no such views, for I will grant unto him no views of the things of which I have spoken. And if this be the case, I command you, my servant Joseph, that you shall say unto him, that he shall do no more, nor trouble me any more concerning this matter. And if this be the case, behold, I say unto thee Joseph, when thou hast translated a few more pages thou shalt stop for a season, even until I command thee again; then thou mayest translate again. And except thou do this, behold, thou shalt have no more gift, and I will take away the things which I have entrusted with thee. And now, because I foresee the lying in wait to destroy thee, yea, I foresee that if my servant Martin Harris humbleth not himself and receive a witness from my hand, that he will fall into transgression; And there are many that lie in wait to destroy thee from off the face of the earth; and for this cause, that thy days may be prolonged, I have given unto thee these commandments. Yea, for this cause I have said: Stop, and stand still until I command thee, and I will provide means whereby thou mayest accomplish the thing which I have commanded thee. And if thou art faithful in keeping my commandments, thou shalt be lifted up at the last day. Amen. (D&C 5:26-35)

One will notice the many instances of conditional statements, as well as “if x does y, then z will happen, if not . . . “ like-statements. This, at least to me, serves as support for God having knowledge of couterfactuals (something we also see in D&C 137) as well as his foreknowledge being contingent, not exhaustive.

There are many such passages in the Doctrine and Covenants that, exegetically, support an Open view of the future. Be sure to check out the following:

George Miller and God's Contingent Foreknowledge

D&C 124, William Law, and Open Theism

D&C 96:6-9 and the contingent nature of being "ordained"

D&C 103:31-34 and God's Contingent Foreknowledge

Amos Pettengill (1826) on the plurality of inhabited planets

Writing in 1826, Amos Pettengill affirmed, based, in part, on the biblical witness, that other planets have been, and are, inhabited, albeit, by people who were not in a rebellious state:

Lesson XV

The Inhabitants of the Worlds Innumerable

Dominion and fear are with him; he maketh peace in his places. Is there any number of his armies?—Job xxv. 2.

The Planets are evidently calculated and designed to accommodate rational beings. They are all like this Earth, and some of them vastly larger. They have day and night, summer and winter. Three of them at least have moons to attend them. Many circumstances constrain us to believe that they are filled with inhabitants; and that every Fixed Star illuminates worlds peopled with creatures like ourselves, but not involved with us in rebellion against the Creator—that there is pace in all his high places.*

He informs us that the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy, when he laid the foundations of this earth (Job xxxviii. 7). Hence intelligent creatures, and perhaps systems of worlds, previously existed. The declaration seems to intimate that the holy inhabitants of these early created worlds, as well as the innumerable company of angels rejoiced to see the new displays of power, wisdom, and goodness, their creator made in bringing this world into existence. At least, there is reason to think, that such inhabitants are included in his numberless armies among the principalities and powers in heavenly places.

The descendants of Adam are numerous beyond our conception. But they probably bear no greater proportion in this respect, to the other subjects of God’s moral government, than a drop does to the ocean, or the smallest particle of dust to the whole earth. Were the Solar System with all its inhabitants struck out of existence, the loss would be comparatively no greater, than that of a single leaf in a boundless forest.

Every intelligent creature separately considered, is inconceivably valuable, in that he possesses immortal powers, and must exist in endlessly increasing bliss or woe, according to the character he forms while on trial. How immensely valuable then is the aggregate of the intelligent creation! But all are vanity when contrasted with the Creator. His powers, glory and happiness transcend theirs, as infinite space does a single point. The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the Heavens:--Who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in the heaven and in the earth (Psalm cxiii). All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity (Isaiah xl. 17). Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight. He put no trust in his servants, and his angels are charged with folly (Job xv. 15 and iv. 13).

* Jehovah intimates that it would have been inconsistent for him to create the Earth, had he not designed it to be inhabited. He created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited. Isaiah xlv. 18. As he shows us a number of other worlds, and gives us reason to believe that a far greater number are enlightened by the myriads of suns, greater, presented to our view, must we not infer from his perfections that he acted consistently in creating them, that he created them not in vain, but to be inhabited? (Amos Pettengill, A View of the Heavens, or Familiar Lessons on Astronomy: With a Celestial Map, by which the constellations can be easily found Adapted to the Use of Schools [New Haven: Nathan Writing, 1826], 64-66)

What is interesting is that Pettengill affirms the existence of other peopled planets based on the same reasoning Latter-day Saints use, based on Moses 1:33:

And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.

 For more, see:

Michael Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, Antiquity to 1915: A Source Book

Adam Frank, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth

Nels L. Nelson on Soteriology

Writing in 1904, long before the Church tried to become more mainstream according to many misinformed critics, we read the following by a Latter-day Saint author asserting a soteriology that is dependent upon grace, including the need for God’s grace to be prompted to co-operate with him at one’s initial salvation:

Not only must he will to co-operate with grace, both in the awakening and in the development of the God-ideal within him, if these operations are to go on at all; but, should he choose to do so, he can cease assisting and effectually oppose and destroy this divine power at any point in his evolution. For man is free,--free as God in a negative sense; potentially as free in a positive sense; and dynamically as free, to the extent that his psychic evolution has been completed . . . “For by grace,” says Paul, “are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves,--it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph. ii., 8, 9). In this passage four important concepts occur: grace, salvation, faith, and works. The question is, How are they related? Manifestly the order of sequence is this: (1) faith, the exercise of that native power which opens the soul to truth; (2) grace of the inpouring of the spirit of God, in consequence of the opening of man’s soul to truthness; (3) salvation, involving two things, the awakening of the God-ideal in man, and the progressive evolution of that ideal under the fostering power of grace; (4) works. In the sense of the exertion of man’s will, these are implied in two of the previous operations: in the faith that opens the door to grace, and in the progressive soul-adjustments which are involved in the evolution of the God-ideal. Works in this latter sense are distinctly pointed out by Paul as necessary, in the verse next to those above quoted. “For we are his workmanship, created in Jesus Christ unto good works,”—the works being, as indicated above, those which flow out of grace, i.e., those which we “are created into Christ Jesus” to perform. (Nels L. Nelson, Scientific Aspects of Mormonism or Religion in Terms of Life [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904], 189-90)

Elsewhere, Nelson wrote the following which refutes the all-too-common charge that “Mormon” soteriology is that of raw works righteousness:

The assertion, sometimes made, that Mormonism believes salvation and exaltation can be won by the laying on of hands will thus be seen to be a slander. The position of the Church is this: while rites and ordinations add nothing in and of themselves, yet are salvation and exaltation impossible without them; for, as we have seen, psychic perfection depends absolutely upon God’s co-operation; but God, being a perfected man and not a vague abstraction, enters into co-operation with lesser psychic beings by definite contract; rites and ordinations are His divinely appointed tokens of such contract. Being therefore essential to God’s co-operation, they are essential to man’s salvation and exaltation; and consequently the man who will not make definite covenants with God—he who vaguely trusts that if he lives a good, honest life, things will come out all right in the end—may not lose eternal life,--since there are a million lower altitudes while only one summit; but he will surely fail of becoming perfect as God is perfect. (Ibid., 290)

Nels L. Nelson's appeal to angelic mediation to explain how God hears prayers

Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening peace. (Psa 141:2)

And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. (Rev 8:3-4)

In his book Scientific Aspects of Mormonism (1904), Nels. L. Nelson offered his opinion about how God receives our prayers. This is a rare instance of a Latter-day Saint appealing to the concept of angels literally bringing our prayers up to God and tying that into a concept of a guardian angel. As this is rare, at least from my reading of historical and modern Latter-day Saint theological works, I am reproducing his comments here:

I do not pretend to know how God answers all the prayers that should be answered; nor has Mormonism spoken definitely on this point. But the following conclusion may safely be inferred from well-established premises in our religion: Ninety-nine per cent. of our prayers are probably passed upon by our guardian angels; the rest by councils of greater wisdom,--by Jesus Christ, or God himself, if need be. (Nels L. Nelson, Scientific Aspects of Mormonism or Religion in Terms of Life [New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904], 43-44)

Louis Berkhof on the Early Christian Witness to Baptismal Regeneration

More honest Reformed Protestant apologists will admit that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration was the teaching of the early Christian church. Indeed, one Reformed Baptist author, William Webster, himself a critic of the doctrine, admitted that it was the unanimous consensus of the early Christians who, when commenting on the topic, wrote:

The doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the Fathers . . . From the early days of the Church, baptism was universally perceived as the means of receiving four basic gifts: the remission of sins, deliverance from death, regeneration, and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit." (William Webster, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995], 95-96).

While not coming out as explicitly as Webster, Louis Berkhof (1873-1957), an American-Dutch Reformed theologian, wrote that:

Baptism was foremost among the sacraments as the rite of initiation into the Church. Even in the Apostolic Fathers we find the idea that it was instrumental in effecting the forgiveness of sins and in communicating the new life of regeneration. In a certain sense it may be said, therefore, that some of the early Fathers taught baptismal regeneration. (Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines [London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1969], 247-48)

While Berhkof tries to downplay the explicit witness of the early Church to baptismal regeneration by saying “some” held to such a doctrine (in reality, all those who commented on water baptism held to such, bar none, including the author of 1 Clement, one of the earliest texts we have outside the New Testament), and elsewhere (p. 248) in the same volume, even someone as biased towards the “symbolic” view like he and Webster are forced to admit such.

For a survey of early Christian authors commenting on John 3:3-5, perhaps the most commonly cited “proof-text” for baptismal regeneration, see:

Baptism, Salvation, and the New Testament, Part 4: John 3:1-7