Jacob of Serugh teaching Mary was Purified at the Annunciation and was Angry at Angels for Not Rescuing Jesus from the Cross

  

5 The Word of the Father made His descent down to the ear by
which misfortune had entered in:
He had watched the serpent’s tracks, and following up its traces,
washed away its bitter poison from the ear of the chaste Virgin
by His hovering descent. (Jacob of Serugh, “ḥawa ba-‘den,” in The Stanzaic Poems of Jacob of Serugh: A Collection of His Madroshe and Sughyotho [trans. Sebastian P. Brock; Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 72; Piscataway, N.J. Gorgias Press, 2022], 202)

 

18 ‘The Holy Spirit who perfects all will hover over your womb and
sanctify it;
then the Power of the Most High will descent and tabernacle in
you
--and a Child shall come forth from you who will trample down
the heads of the snake’. (Ibid., 206)

 

15 ‘O angels, zealous and mighty, why did you not act in zeal
when you saw Him stripped bare?
Two of you were abused in Sodom
and with your fire it was swallowed up and delivered (to its)

Fate);
now your Lord is being abused, do not keep silent, O angels!

 

16 ‘O Michael, commander of the supernal beings,
why are you silent, not using your might and your zeal?
Look how they have pierced the Beauteous One with a spear.
Cast your fire on the wicked men so that they are burnt up,
for your Lord is on the Cross, while you, O fiery one, are
(sitting) tranquil! (“sleq la-ṣilbo,” ibid., 258)

 

Scriptural Mormonism Podcast Episode 46: Jacob Ryder on Temple Themes in the Epistle to the Ephesians

Episode 46: Jacob Ryder on Temple Themes in the Epistle to the Ephesians

Jacob of Serugh's teaching of Mary as the New Eve in the hymn "ḥawa ba-‘den"

  

3 Eve’s sin contracted the debt which was held in reserve for
Mary,
so that the young girl might repay her mother’s debt,
and thanks to her that document would be torn up which had
cried out against all generations.

 

4 The serpent, with venomous intention, breathed poison into the
ears of weak Eve
--this passed on, with murderous effect, flying from generation
to generation,
until there came forth the Son of Mary the Infant who slew that
snake.

 

. . .

 

24 There were two virgins, but the action of the two was quite
different:
the one brought down her husband, the other gave support to
her father
for in Eve Adam found a grace, but in Mary he was invited to
heaven! (Jacob of Serugh, “ḥawa ba-‘den,” in The Stanzaic Poems of Jacob of Serugh: A Collection of His Madroshe and Sughyotho [trans. Sebastian P. Brock; Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 72; Piscataway, N.J. Gorgias Press, 2022], 200, 210)

 

Heber C. Kimball on the Importance of Men Personifying “Adam” in the Temple Endowment Ceremony

  

Elder H. C. Kimball said, The ideas advanced by brother Lyman are good and true. We have been taken as it were from the earth, and have travelled until we have entered the Celestial Kingdom and what is it for, it is to personify Adam. And you discover that our God is like one of us, for he created us in his own image. Every man that ever came upon this earth, or any other earth will take the course we have taken. Another thing, it is to bring us to an organization, and just as quick as we can get into that order and government, we have the Celestial Kingdom here. You have got to honor and reverence your brethren, for if you do not you never can honor God. The man was created, and God gave him dominion over the whole earth, but he saw that he never could multiply, and replenish the earth, without a woman. And he made one and gave her to him. He did not make the man for the woman; but the woman for the man, and it is just as unlawful for you to rise up and rebel against your husband, as it would be for man to rebel against God. (William Clayton, Journal, December 21, 1845, in An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, ed. George D. Smith [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991], 226-27)

 

Brigham Young: The Exalted Will Dwell on the Celestial Earth

  

In conversing upon various principles President Young thought none would inherit this Earth when it became celestial & translated into the presence of God but those who would be crowned as Gods & able to endure the fulness of the Presance of God excepted they might be permitted to take with them some servants for whom they would be held responsible all others would have to inherit another kingdom even that kingdom agreeing with the law which they had kept yet He thought they would eventually have the privilege of proveing themselves worthy & advanceing to a celestial kingdom but it would be a slow progress. (Wilford Woodruff, Journal, August 5, 1855)

 

D. Charles Pyle on Isaiah 43:10

[On Isaiah 43:10:]

 

Those who become gods never are formed as gods; they are made gods. So it is also with LDS beliefs. Gods aren’t either born gods or formed into gods. They become gods and are made equal with Christ, becoming gods by the will of the Father and by the grace of Christ, by his imparting of the fulness of the Father to those who are joint heirs with Christ. No one in LDS beliefs actually is, or has been, either created or formed a god.

 

Yet still, though there is more to say about this verse, the utility of this verse of scripture to Evangelicals to attack LDS beliefs just received a further handicap. Since we do not believe that any god was formed a god, or created a god, the passage is irrelevant to us and doesn’t address our doctrine at all) as Evangelicals tend to think when they decide to use this verse to elicit unbelief in an unwary Latter-day Saint, or to cause doubt in an investigator of the Gospel message as presented by the Church). There are other nuances as well that may be seen in this form of the word, for this form of the word also can have several senses, most typically perfect and passive in meaning but which can also take a reflexive sense, which sense then would become “has created oneself,” or, “has formed oneself.” Sometimes the niphal perfect form just has a basic sense (“was formed,” or, “was created”), but if the reflexive meaning were applied one to easily could make the argument that the passage implies that gods don’t just form themselves (because people mold them, or otherwise form them into their varied shapes). One thus also could argue from this that God existed before humans on Earth molded idols, and that God will continue to exist even after all molded idols are gone.

 

This sense would bring us relatively closer to the real underlying meaning found in the Targum of Jonathan . . .

 

How did Jonathan ben Uzziel, who is attributed as the ancient author of the Targum of Jonathan, handle the text and its referents to time? That author simply interpreted the text of Isaiah 43:10 thus:

 

You are witnesses before me, says the LORD, and my servant, the Messiah, in whom is my desire, is that you may know and that you may believe before me, and be made to understand that I am he: I am he who is from the beginning; even ages of ages are mine, and apart from me there is no god.

 

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) (North Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2018), 106-7, 105

Dana M. Pike on Ancient Near Eastern Dream Reports

  

Dreaming as a form of divine communication was so significant that examples of regular, everyday-type dreams, “in all their fantastic variety,” were collected and catalogued into what we now call “dream books.” Evidence for this practice exists from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Ugarit, and the Hittite empire. As was the case in other forms of divination (attempts to know the future), ancient Near Eastern scholars produced lists of these dream elements and their expected outcomes with a standard protasis-apodosis structure (if ... then ...). These dream precedents along with their previously observed outcomes were viewed as a means to discern the fate of someone who received a similar divine communication in a similar dream. For example, a few lines from the so-called Chester Beatty “Dream Book,” an Egyptian text dating to the reign of Ramses II (1297–1213 BC), read:

 

If a man see himself in a dream: ...

Eating the flesh of a donkey. Good. It means his promotion....

Looking through a window. Good. The hearing of his cry by his god....

Seeing a large cat. Good. It means a large harvest will occur for him....

Drinking warm beer. BAD. It means suppurating illness infects him....

Eating a filleted catfish. BAD. His seizure by a crocodile....

Bitten by a snake. BAD. It means the occurrence of a quarrel against him.

 

Although the operative principles behind such interpretations are not always evident to us (why was dreaming about eating donkey flesh a good omen?), these lists of dreams and their outcomes (as well as other divinatory lists of observed phenomena) exhibit an underlying effort to organize the world and its competing forces, and thus to better know the future and to counteract demonic influences.

 

Apart from dream catalogues, actual reports of individuals’ dreams in the ancient Near East occur in royal inscriptions, literary texts, and letters, as well as in myths and epics. These dream reports were produced using the standard literary conventions of their time and culture to express in writing the content of the dream. Although the available textual evidence of dream accounts from the Semitic peoples living in Syria and Canaan is much sparser, these reports and interpretations show evidence of early Mesopotamian influences.

 

For some time now, scholars have classified these written ancient Near Eastern dream reports as representing either message or symbolic dreams. According to this typology, a message dream is one in which a divine being visits a person and delivers a spoken message. One well-known example is preserved in the Ugaritic tablets, in the poetic narration of a presumably epic king, Keret. Through disease, accidents, and other tragedies, Keret’s family was all destroyed. Lamenting the loss of his progeny one night, he fell asleep and the great West Semitic god, El, appeared to him in a dream (notice the parallelism in this text).

 

As he [Keret] wept he fell asleep;

as he cried slumber (came).

Sleep overpowered him and he lay down;

slumber, and he curled up.

And in his dream El came down,

in his vision the Father of Man,

and he drew near, asking Keret:

“What ails Keret that he weeps,

the gracious one, heir of El, that he groans?” ...

[“It is s]ons I would beget,

descendants I would multiply!”

And Bull, his father, El re[plied]:

“[Desist] from weeping, Keret,

from crying, gracious one, heir of El.

Wash yourself and rouge yourself;

Wash your [han]ds to the elbow,

[your] finge[rs] up to the shoulder.” ...

 

At this point El further instructs Keret to offer sacrifices and then to attack another kingdom, demanding the king’s daughter for his wife. She will bear him a son to rule after him.

 

Keret awoke, and (it was) a dream,

the servant of El [awoke] and (it was) a vision.

He washed himself and rouged himself,

he washed his hands to the elbow,

his fingers to the shoulder.

 

The epic tells that after waking Keret did all that he had been instructed to do in El’s message to him and everything came to pass just as Keret had dreamed. (Dana M. Pike, “Lehi Dreamed a Dream: The Report of Lehi’s Dream in Its Biblical Context,” in The Things Which My Father Saw: Approaches to Lehi’s Dream and Nephi’s Vision, ed. Daniel L. Belnap, Gaye Strathearn, and Stanley A. Johnson [Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011], 96-98)