Ex-Mormons Laughed. Now They're Just Orbiting the Truth!

[Limnor]

Mormonism is unique in its belief that after death, some individuals may have the chance to become gods and ultimately create their own worlds, populating them with spirit children.

Zeus and the other Greek gods may not stand for this. Or El, Enki and Enlil, and the other Sumerian gods.

I see this as a reflection of what Joseph “did.” His MO was to synthesize things and put his spin on them. Mormon cosmology reflects that same pattern—a fusion of Christian restorationism, Swedenborg’s three-teired heavens, Jacob Cochran’s ecstatic communalism and spiritual wifery, the Abraham covenant mentioning seed as countless as stars, and the Greek idea of eternal intelligences. The Book of Mormon follows the same model: it isn’t a single revelation but a collage of voices, traditions, and borrowed theologies woven together through sacred biblical language that appears ancient.

[Marcus]

...His MO was to synthesize things and put his spin on them. Mormon cosmology reflects that same pattern—a fusion of Christian restorationism, Swedenborg’s three-teired heavens, Jacob Cochran’s ecstatic communalism and spiritual wifery, the Abraham covenant mentioning seed as countless as stars, and the Greek idea of eternal intelligences. The Book of Mormon follows the same model: it isn’t a single revelation but a collage of voices, traditions, and borrowed theologies woven together through sacred biblical language that appears ancient.

Exactly right, in my opinion. Every single time I've looked deeper, in any direction, I see this pattern. Another excellent example is the way Smith managed to make his book look archaic enough to give apologists material to write about for years. Anyone else looking sees the enthusiastic borrowing, imitating and combining; because they start by assuming their conclusions, mopologists explained it by introducing a (mostly?) Early Modern English-speaking ghost committee that randomly interspersed Early Modern English into the Book of Mormon.

(It's also the first area where I've seen apologists publicly retract the vast majority of their very specific assertions, but that's what happens when you try to support fiction with hard fact from public data bases --everyone can check your work.)

[Limnor]

Exactly right, in my opinion. Every single time I've looked deeper, in any direction, I see this pattern. Another excellent example is the way Smith managed to make his book look archaic enough to give apologists material to write about for years. Anyone else looking sees the enthusiastic borrowing, imitating and combining; because they start by assuming their conclusions, mopologists explained it by introducing a (mostly?) Early Modern English-speaking ghost committee that randomly interspersed Early Modern English into the Book of Mormon.

(It's also the first area where I've seen apologists publicly retract the vast majority of their very specific assertions, but that's what happens when you try to support fiction with hard fact from public data bases --everyone can check your work.)

Exactly, marcus—once you see that pattern, you can’t unsee it.

The “Early Modern English ghost committee” idea is a perfect example of an attempt to retrofit a fancy—and frankly absurd—technical solution onto what has a simpler explanation: Joseph had an ear for what “sounded” scriptural. And when you consider his process as performative, the blend of sources makes a lot more sense, even when he goes too far.

Picture Joseph sitting at a desk with multiple sources—the KJV, “travel reports,” scraps of half-scribbled sermon recollections—fusing them into into something with an ancient veneer because the language “sounds” sacred. That gave it purpose.

The language itself provides multiple examples to inform this view. The book moves between registers: straight KJV syntax (“and it came to pass”) sitting beside frontier phrasing (“they did march in the wilderness,” “after the manner of his language”) or sermon language straight out of the burned-over district.

Tying yourself in knots over data sets and word-frequency graphs plasters over the mimicry, but it doesn’t make it go away.

That same synthesis runs through his later theology, each new revelation built from recognizable pieces, rearranged until they seem unprecedented. The irony, at least from my view, is that he was giving his followers what they wanted to hear.

I’m working on a “Jacob Cochran Influence” piece to demonstrate the borrowed bits of “spiritual wifery,” in case anyone was unaware of that piece of the puzzle.

[Limnor]

he was giving his followers what they wanted to hear.

One example of that idea—Joseph telling people what they want to hear—can be seen, through my interpretive lens of “inserting real-world people into the story,” in the story of Ammon and King Lamoni.

Scene: Joseph has moved to Harmony following arrest and ridicule following his treasure-digging reputation. He had just married Emma Hale in January 1827 but against her father Isaac Hale’s wishes. By relocating to Harmony—Emma’s hometown—Joseph hoped to reconcile with her family.

Ammon (Joseph) enters the land as an outsider seeking acceptance from Emma’s skeptical family. He casts himself as a humble servant-prophet who addresses the people he interacts with as kings and queens in a spiritual kingdom, flattering and sanctifying them, providing them with the world they longed to inhabit.

Sounds a bit like this repeated refrain throughout the book:

Ether 8 2 And Jared rebelled against his father, and came and dwelt in the land of Heth. And it came to pass that he did flatter many people, because of his cunning words, until he had gained the half of the kingdom.

[Limnor]

I’m working on a “Jacob Cochran Influence” piece to demonstrate the borrowed bits of “spiritual wifery,” in case anyone was unaware of that piece of the puzzle.

In the early 1830s, Mormon missionaries traveled to New England in the aftermath of Jacob Cochran’s religious experimentation, which lasted in earnest for about three years. Cochran’s Society of Free Brethren and Sisters had practiced communal living and “spiritual wifery,” a system of sanctioned pairings that tied marriage and revelation.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=55698

https://gospeltangents.com/2022/02/did- ... -polygamy/

Notably, Cochran’s followers were known for dramatizing scripture in their meetings through reenactments of the Garden of Eden with “the ideal Adam, in the person of Cochran, and Eve, in the person of some chosen female,” who appeared as they might have “before fig-leaf aprons were in fashion.”

While Cochran described “spiritual wifery” as egalitarian, his own authority was central. He claimed prophetic insight into which pairings the Spirit ordained, and this claim effectively gave him patriarchal control within the community. Women were told that union with a “spiritual husband” was a divine test of obedience; men were urged to surrender jealousy as a sign of sanctification.

By 1819 he was arrested on charges of “lewd and lascivious behavior,” and his movement fragmented, but left behind believers leaderless but steeped in visionary enthusiasm.

It was into this atmosphere that John C. Thompson, Orson Pratt, Orson Hyde, Brigham Young, and Heber C. Kimball arrived in the 1830s. In his journals, Kimball described meetings where “the Spirit fell like fire” and entire families entered the waters of baptism, calling the outpouring “as in the days of Pentecost.” Young likewise wrote of “fields white already to harvest,” interpreting the region’s reception of their message as proof that the Lord had “prepared the hearts” of the people.

When Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball arrived in 1833–34, they baptized numerous ex-Cochranites, including families still practicing communal property and “spiritual union” ideals.

Some additional reading and sources:

https://archive.org/details/religionsex ... 0fost_x2t6

https://files.core.ac.uk/download/234950931.pdf

https://olivercowdery.com/gathering/JCochran.htm