Does the temple ceremony teach a literal Adam and Eve?

[malkie]

It's a long time since I was in the temple, but I believe that I remember the following or similar expression:

Brethren and sisters, as you sit here, you will hear the voices of three persons who represent Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. Elohim will command Jehovah and Michael to go down and organize a world. The work of the six creative periods will be represented. They will also organize man in their own likeness and image, male and female. This, however, is simply figurative so far as the man and woman are concerned.

[drumdude]

It's a long time since I was in the temple, but I believe that I remember the following or similar expression:

Brethren and sisters, as you sit here, you will hear the voices of three persons who represent Elohim, Jehovah, and Michael. Elohim will command Jehovah and Michael to go down and organize a world. The work of the six creative periods will be represented. They will also organize man in their own likeness and image, male and female. This, however, is simply figurative so far as the man and woman are concerned.

Interesting. From the comments on that site it says they took that sentence out sometime after 1990.

Probably yet another tug of war between the prophets seers and revelators who can never seem to get anything right.

[2bizE]

Yes. Remember this one from JRH?

“I do not know the details of what happened on this planet before that, but I do know these two were created under the divine hand of God, that for a time they lived alone in a paradisiacal setting where there was neither human death nor future family, and that through a sequence of choices they transgressed a commandment of God which required that they leave their garden setting but which allowed them to have children before facing physical death.”

Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet
Jeffrey R. Holland

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... t?lang=eng

[Dr Exiled]

Joseph Smith obviously wanted his dupes to believe in Adam Ondi Ahman and the pure Adamic language, etc., etc. So, my guess is that a literal father Adam and mother Eve is probably what he wanted the dupes to believe. Whether he actually believed in the crap he was shoveling is another question.

[Gadianton]

Brigham Young said no, and it is one of the few areas where I agree with him.

If it's not literal, then what on earth is it figurative of? Isn't Brigham the same guy who said Satan hid dinosaur bones in the earth?

The only "figurative" explanations I've ever heard from Chapel Mormonism are things like, a "day" could be a thousand years or even much longer, or God didn't literally take a "rib" from Adam, or it wasn't a serpent, but Satan.

For fundamentalists, something taken as a symbol instead of a literal thing, is a symbol for another literal thing.

[Kishkumen]

If it's not literal, then what on earth is it figurative of?

Well, for Brigham probably something to do with Adam-God.

[Gadianton]

According to wiki:

During the 19th century and the early 20th century, the Adam–God doctrine was featured as part of the church's endowment ceremony. However, the doctrine was startling to most members when it was introduced and remained controversial. Most Mormons and some breakoff groups, the most notable being apostle Orson Pratt, rejected the doctrine in favor of more traditional biblical Adam and Eve theory.

To me that sounds like changing the endowment so that it's a literal account of Adam-God, which acknowledges that the traditional account is factually incorrect, rather than metaphorical.

If you have evidence that BY pulled something like the red room scene in Twin Peaks for the temple I'm listening.

[Kishkumen]

According to wiki:

During the 19th century and the early 20th century, the Adam–God doctrine was featured as part of the church's endowment ceremony. However, the doctrine was startling to most members when it was introduced and remained controversial. Most Mormons and some breakoff groups, the most notable being apostle Orson Pratt, rejected the doctrine in favor of more traditional biblical Adam and Eve theory.

To me that sounds like changing the endowment so that it's a literal account of Adam-God, which acknowledges that the traditional account is factually incorrect, rather than metaphorical.

If you have evidence that BY pulled something like the red room scene in Twin Peaks for the temple I'm listening.

Yeah, one might think, but I believe that is incorrect. The A-G stuff was unfolded during a lecture. It was the lecture that was changed, not the endowment. An astute observer of the endowment, up to recent times, could easily detect A-G elements in the endowment too. Brigham wanted people to see the process of Adam becoming mortal in a more literal and to him plausible way that required the Biblical account to be seen as symbolic.