Mauss' Book "All Abraham's Children"

 

The following will be my commentary and excerpts from the book All Abraham's Children by Armand L. Mauss.

From the very start of the book I can tell that the author is very politically progressive or far-Left, which is fine except that it's clear that the person has a bias.  

I agree with his initial assessment in the first few pages where he basically argues that as the LDS Church began to grow, through missionary efforts, to become a more globalist Church, the original doctrine of pure-blooded Ephraimites began to be less emphasized. 

I did notice that he tries to combine and tie together the concept of European Ephraimites with the former "seed of Cain" doctrine (which was officially repudiated by the LDS Church in 2013). In my opinion, the seed of Cain idea, which came from Protestants, can be rejected without needing to also reject the doctrine of European Ephraimites.

I noticed the first major error in his judgmental attitude toward original Ephraimite Mormonism, when he writes on page 4:

... the Apostle Paul envisioned a world outside Jerusalem, where all mankind could become "the children of Abraham," without regard to original race, lineage, or culture. 

To be honest, this is a problematic statement, given the fact that Paul himself is proud of his Benjamite Israelite heritage. Meanwhile, the whole point of the genealogy of Jesus in the gospels is in part to show that he descends from the Israelite genetic lineage through Abraham as the Davidic Messiah as an Israelite King.  Furthermore, Paul was not including Gentiles without regard to original race or lineage. In reality, as I explained in my blog post here, according to biblical scholars, Matthew Thiessen is most probably correct in his scholarship: wherein Thiessen explains that Paul was literally teaching that Gentiles needed to have their genes / race literally replaced with the lineage and race of the Israelite Messiah! 

Also on page 4, Mauss says that the focus on ethnic lineage and the Tribes of Israel in Mormonism, was influenced by the outside influence of British Israelism rather than LDS scripture itself. But British Israelism did not really develop and become popular until 1840. I do not see early Mormonism being influenced primarily by British Israelism but by Joseph Smith's scriptures canon and Patriarchal Blessings, all which was based on revelation. In other words, when the Book of Mormon declares that Joseph Smith Jr. is a descendant of the Israelite Joseph of the Tribe of Ephraim, you can't then blame the LDS Ephraimites doctrine on British Israelism! 

There is just too much evidence of the doctrine that Indo-European converts have an Ephraimite ethnic identity within the early LDS Scriptures themselves and Patriarchal Blessings, for his argument on page 8 to be true: wherein Mauss argues that it was the Mormon expulsions to eventually Utah and refugees from the British isles, Scandinavia, Germany and other European countries, that led to "the creation of a new people, a new ethnos ..." (pg. 8). I see what he is trying to do. He is trying to water drown original Mormonism and make it a more universalist religion. 

The problem is Mauss' premises are flawed. His first premise, that the pure doctrine of Paul was a non-ethnic universalist religion is wrong. The second premise, that Mormons only developed this idea of being European Ephraimites when they were in Utah is also mistaken. The problem with the first premise, as I covered above, is that Paul never taught this pure non-ethnic religion but thought that Gentiles needed to be literally transformed into Israelites. The second premise is wrong because the concept of European Ephraimites was already firmly established in LDS Scripture at the very beginning as early as 1830 through the Book of Mormon!  For example on page 10 he writes that "Mormons came to understand themselves increasingly as literal Israelites rather than as the Gentiles of the Book of Mormon." I disagree with this. We can read Patriarchal Blessings early on describing many LDS members as pure-blooded Israelites from the Tribe of Ephraim.

Excerpts from "Beowulf and Nephi"

 

Excerpts from Beowulf and Nephi: A Literary View of the Book of Mormon by Robert E . Nichols , Jr.

Excerpts from part (1):

In all the wide world, past and present, there is no greater body of literature than that which we call English. And in all the annals of English literature, spanning thirteen centuries of impressive expression, no single matter has had greater impact on the creative genius than the life of Jesus Christ and the Biblical account of events surrounding that Life. ... triumphed in the ninth century with Cynewulf's Dream of the Rood. That matter suffused the Arthurian legendry of early Middle English, ... Thirteen centuries, thousands of stylists, trillions of words in billions of lines of verse and prose - all influenced by a single written source, the Bible, itself little larger than a good-sized novel. ...

 ...  and given a century of literary art still fundamentally influenced by the same materials [in the Bible], ... viewed as an addendum to Scripture, the latter-day narrative [of the Book of Mormon] adds, at the very least, a provocative time-and-space dimension to Christian thought. Even viewed as an apocryphal tour de force, the work adds giant chunks of episodic adventure to Christian lore. ...

 

Note that Cynewulf's Dream of the Rood was written to make Christianity more acceptable to the Germanic peoples by presenting Jesus in a more masculine frame.  For more details see The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity: A Sociohistorical Approach to Religious Transformation by James C. Russell.

This is how I interpret the Book of Mormon, in that I see it being filtered through the author and translator Joseph Smith, who himself is of Germanic descent being British and Irish; and so the characters in the Book of Mormon represent that Germanic Anglo-Saxon vitality that Joseph Smith contained in his lineage and which I think came through in the text. The author of the article quoted herein, Robert E . Nichols , Jr., does not go into all of this on lineage but he does compare the Book of Mormon to the Germanic/Norse Beowulf in his analysis quoted below. The very fact that he reveals parallel heroic energy in both Nephi and Beowulf, is evidence to me of Germanic/Norse energy being filtered through the Germanic Joseph Smith in his characters in The Book of Mormon.

Excerpts from part (3):

... Lehi simply does not speak the language of his older children or his wife. Nor does he ever learn. ... He has obviously failed to convince Laman and Lemuel of the validity of his religious experience ... [Lehi insists] that he and his wife are not in a wilderness, for he has "obtained a land of promise." ... Lehi is a very human character. He is, of course, as Hugh Nibley has demonstrated, a product of a Heroic Age.[3] But his human traits make him readily identifiable with the domestically beleaguered patriarch in the life and letters of any age. He is today's well-to-do former businessman who turns, in early retirement and semi-retrenchment, to the religious avocation, an enigma to his wife and older children, who knew him during the pressure years as a hard-driving merchant.

By contrast, Nephi, equally a product of the same Heroic Age, is perhaps most clearly approached as a Book of Mormon figure, not through modern parallels, but through comprehension of his conduct as hero in the epic tradition, a tradition which, in Old English remnants, preserves Continental motifs dating into the pre-Christian era.

In that tradition, the hero displays certain typical physical propensities. Beowulf, a prime example, can wear thirty sets of armor; Nephi, even though "exceeding young, nevertheless [is] large in stature," so large as to elicit comment ment twice in an abridgment.

Beowulf is termed mankind's most powerful man, in his day; Nephi has "received much strength" and musters power to burst the bonds which bind his hands and feet, eluding destruction at the teeth of wild beasts. Beowulf possessess greater swimming endurance than any rival; Nephi, too, excels in the manly skills, such as hunting with the steel bow. Beowulf and Nephi both display undoubted personal courage, Beowulf in his combat with Grendel's Dam and Nephi in his daring impersonation of Laban. Both men are well-born, as genealogical references imply.

And both are quintessentially men of action, humorlessly dedicated to the pursuit of a righteous cause.

As a further facet of this tradition, the hero, imbued with an unshakeable sense of purpose, delivers a beot, or boast, affirming his prowess and confirming his resolution as the fateful enterprise looms near. Beowulf, preparing to meet the fearsome Grendel, proclaims:

I myself give no humbler tally in martial vigor than Grendel himself. Therefore, I will not kill him with sword, though I easily may. For, though he be renowned for battle, he knows not of such warfare as to strike against me, hewing my shield. But, if he dare seek hand-to-hand combat, tonight we two shall meet. And afterward the all-wise God, the holy Lord, will adjudge the glorious deed as He thinks proper, on whatever hand.

In a similar fashion Nephi, charged by Lehi to seek the Brass Plates of Laban, boldly announces:

I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

Subsequently, Nephi, after some indecision, takes command of the band of brothers, strongly reminiscent of the Old English dright, or warrior band. Ever the intrepid individual, Nephi causes the band to "hide themselves without the walls," while he reconnoiters the city himself, a solitary emprise like the aged Beowulf's solo attack on the Dragon to shield his companions, though they too have a clear commitment. That commitment, in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, may be one of noble purpose - to support their captain in destroying the monster - but more frequently it is only the promise of gold, mercenary payment made by the drighťs leader, their ring-giver. Nephi's band, ostensibly, undertakes their raid for* a lofty cause - securing "the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass" - but before ever trying for the plates, they "gather together [their] gold, and [their] silver, and [their] precious things." Ancient battle poems show that neither gold nor lofty cause could keep a drighťs courage at the sticking point: The warriors needed to be harangued into perseverance, reminded of their obligations to the ring-giver and their ultimate rewards. In such a vein Nephi, facing his band's defection, harangues, "As the Lord liveth, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness, until we have accomplished the thing which the Lord hath commanded us." He reminds them of their debt to the Lord, the waiting treasure, the coming destruction of the city, and the wisdom of their cause. Emboldened by the harangue, though not without certain further backslidings, Nephi's dright see their mission through.

 

Nephi is well cast for the heroic mantle - he's built of the appropriate materials in the correct proportions, he has developed enviable capacities in the proper skills, and he does things when they need to be done. However, he is far more complex than most of his counterparts in the epics. As early as the Plates of Laban Aifair, for instance, Nephi reveals himself to be a logician of the first water. A typical young champion like Wiglaf may try to spur Beowulf's dright by reminding them of their debts and shouting, "Let us press on." But when the young Nephi makes the same exhortation, "Let us go up again unto Jerusalem," he supplies a triad of illustrations to prove that the dright should advance and to demonstrate that they will achieve victory unharmed. And with rhetorical insight, he thrice calls for action, utilizing the power of incremental repetition, and "they did follow [him] up until [they] came without the walls of Jerusalem." It is this same logician's demeanor (which later safeguards Nephi from his mutinous brothers) with which he "said many things unto [his] brethren, insomuch that they were confounded, and could not contend against [him]; neither durst they lay their hands upon [him], nor touch [him] with their fingers, even for the space of many days."

 

Such a bent of mind, such a capacity for confounding and converting opposition through logic and reason[4] and appeal to emotion, strongly differentiates Nephi as a personality from Lehi his father: Nephi is a persuader of the foremost magnitude. In the entrapment of Zoram, for example, Nephi displays discrimination of action and reflection, mastery at merging the physical man with the philosophical man, sagacity in selecting the deed or symbol of the deed. Seizing Zoram and holding him, "that he should not flee,"Nephi, who reemphasizes his physical advantage, could have dispatched the servant as easily as he had the master. Instead, Nephi "spake with him ... [saying] that if he would hearken unto our words, we would spare his life," adding the surety of an oath and the mystery of a riddle. Nephi, like Marlowe's Tamburlaine, grasps the fine distinction between the word and the sword.[4] And Zoram surrenders, even as Theridamas to Tamburlaine - "Won with thy words, and conquered with thy looks." It is undoubtedly this same persuasive acumen which softens "the heart of Ishmael, and also his household," bringing Ishmael's daughters into the wilderness as the brothers' wives. For in the young Nephi persuasion is "the fulness of [his] intent." And it remained ever thus, as witnessed in the old Nephi, who, looking back on his life's work a half-century later, concludes that "it persuadeth [men] to do good" (II Nephi 33:4).

Indeed, it is Nephi's search for a more persuasive personality which seems to mark a progression in his character as he ages. As a green youth, wearing brotherly concern almost like a badge, Nephi says, "Being grieved because of the hardness of their hearts, I cried unto the Lord for them."As a maturing young man, he sorrows in frustration: "My soul is rent with anguish because of you, and my heart is pained." And as an old man he grieves for his people, the badge turned suit of hair: "For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith . . . ." At the end of his days, he mourns that he is not "mighty in writing, like unto speaking," for the speech, with the Spirit, can carry his message "unto the hearts of the children of men."

Nephi's disclaimer rebuts its own author and closes his work on Nephi's disclaimer rebuts its own author and closes his work on the note of light irony which often marks a writer's deathbed retractions.[5] His impatience with the weak esteem accorded the written word (II Nephi 33:2) is the sort one would expect from a man, like Nephi, who remains, at heart, closer to the active life than to the contemplative. Yet in his farewell he writes with rhetorical strength, capturing in the written word the moving quality of incremental repetition that had marked the spoken words of his long-ago harangue outside the walls of Jerusalem. In some measure, consciously yet unconsciously, he has bridged his imagined chasm between writing and speech:

I glory in plainness;

I glory in truth; 

I glory in my Jesus,

For he hath redeemed my soul from hell.

 

I have charity for my people

And great faith in Christ

That I shall meet many souls

Spotless at his judgment-seat.

 

I have charity for the Jew;

I say Jew, because I mean them from whence I came.

I also have charity for the Gentiles. -

But behold,

For none of these can I hope,

Except they shall be reconciled unto Christ,

And enter into the narrow gate,

And walk in the straight path, which leads to life,

And continue in the path

Until the end of the day of 

path

Until the end of the day of probation.[6]

 

The Book of Mormon is, as I have suggested, part of a great literary tradition, yet a part, for all its uniqueness, which has still not achieved primacy, neither in its own right nor in its influence on the arts. ...

In this analysis by Robert E . Nichols, Jr., I see the Book of Mormon as a form of Germanic or Anglo-Saxon literature that presents a version of Muscular Christianity. Why this makes the Book of Mormon psychologically valuable to me as a literary tool for promoting  healthy masculinity, is that in my view it is a counteractive to some of the more emasculating aspects of the New Testament wherein traditional masculinity is often (though not always) replaced with an emphasis on men being celibate, pacifist, voluntary martyrs while willfully seeking lower status; as covered in books like Unmanly Men: Refigurations of Masculinity in Luke-Acts by Brittany E. Wilson and the early Christian martyrdom scholarship of Paul Middleton. To see how I deal with these "emasculating trends" in the New Testament but still find value in the New Testament as a phase and strategy of God see my website page here.

"Supercouples": Appreciating Your Polygamist Pioneer Ancestors through the Perspective of the Book "Selective Breeding" by Aramariu

 

The Case for Mormon People as a Quasi-Ethnic Identity and Unique Culture via the Selection Process of Plural Marriage and Male Kingdom Building in the 1800s:

Disclaimer: Note that the following posts below are only meant to express an appreciation for my polygamist Mormon Pioneer ancestors and the religion and quasi-ethnic culture they contributed to creating; but are not designed to promote the practice of polygamy today. Appreciation of past plural marriages and how it formed the core body of LDS members today, is not the same as prescribing a return to plural marriage today. Knowing what the Mormon Movement was in the 1800s, is not the same as believing it should be that way today. I agree with most Book of Mormon based sects that have become monogamous Christian churches

 

•   Gene-Culture Coevolution & The Domestication of The Mormon People

•  Ex-Mormon Jonathan Streeter argues for the "Truth" of Mormonism by Seeing Mormonism as an Evolutionary Living Framework of Action, Ideals, Tradition and Heritage

•  Nauvoo Polygamy as Nietzschean-like Selective Breeding of Supercouples toward Creating a separate "Nicer" People (Peoplehood as The Kingdom of God)

• BH Roberts on "Nietzcheanish" Selective Breeding of the First Mormons via Polygamy to Create a People of Higher Character

•  Birthing the Mormon People through Plural Marriage by Selecting for Elect Men to Bear Noble Preexistent Spirits & Grow in Power and Dominion

•  Evidence that Mormon's are "Nicer" i.e. More "Christian" than Others through a Selection Process of Personality types and Character traits 

•  Big 5 Personality Theory & How Mormon Culture Filters in more Agreeable, Conscientious, and Friendly People

•  The New Covenant of the Priesthood and 1800s Plural Marriage as the Means to the End of Raising Up a Righteous Seed (Peoplehood) and Generating Zion as a Circle of Friends

•  William Hyde & Building the Tribe of Ephraim

•  The LDS "Good" as Life Affirming & Species Preserving: Jacob 5 on Ripe Fruit Bearing Seeds in Good Cultural Soil to Grow Healthy Peoplehood

•  The Kingdom of Heaven as Selecting for Good Fathers with Civilizing Ideas, Upright Behavior Habits & a Receptive Child-like Attitude Passed Down from the Lineage of Patriarchal Fathers projected onto the Father God-idea that encapsulates Healthy Fatherhood and Tribal Fairness, Unity and Civility

BH Roberts on "Nietzcheanish" Selective Breeding of the First Mormons via Polygamy to Create a People of Higher Character

 

The following is excerpts from A Divinely Ordered Species of Eugenics By David G.March 5, 2008:

Following the Manifesto of 1890 and the decline of officially-sanctioned plural marriages among the Latter-day Saints, many Mormons worked to construct explanations for the practice of polygamy. ... One strategy, highlighted here, was to downplay the significance of plural marriage in both practice and in doctrine. However, at the same time that this was occurring, many Mormons were arguing that polygamy had produced a large and righteous posterity ... superior to other people born into monogamous families. B. H. Roberts presented one of the most insightful articulations of this narrative:

Plural wives among the Latter-day Saints, and first wives who consented to their husbands entering into these relations, accepted the institution from the highest moral and religious motives…that they might bear the souls of men under conditions that gave largest promise of improving the race and bringing forth superior men and women who shall lead the way to that higher state of things for which the world is waiting…its purpose was not earth-happiness, but earth-life discipline, undertaken in the interest of special advantages for succeeding generations of men. That purpose was to give to succeeding generations a superior fatherhood and motherhood, by enlarging the opportunities of men of high character, moral integrity, and spiritual development to become progenitors of the race; to give to women of like character and development a special opportunity to consecrate themselves to the high mission of motherhood. Race-culture, then, was the inspiring motive of the plural-wife feature of this revelation on marriage. It was in the name of a divinely ordered species of eugenics that the Latter-day Saints accepted plurality of wives (B.H. Roberts, The Truth, The Way, The Life: An Elementary Treatise in Theology, ed. John W. Welch, 2nd ed. [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1996], 556-57).

Roberts was not the first to postulate that Latter-day Saint plural marriage would produce superior offspring. Susa Young Gates argued in 1907 that “it would be difficult to find a finer race of men and women, morally, mentally, and physically, than has been produced through that order of marriage.”[1] Josiah Edwin Hickman’s article “The Offspring of the Mormon People” was published in 1924 in the Journal of Heredity.[2] Gates and Hickman both argued that the Mormons were physically, as well as morally superior to other people. This may have been a result, as Kathleen Flake argued, of Protestant characterizations of the children of polygamous marriages as stunted and malformed. In 1902, the Improvement Era published a missionary’s tribute to his mother, which reveals that Mormons were still very conscious of criticisms of alleged Mormon polygamous deformities, charges which had been made for decades ...

... the fruits of keeping the commandments of God. The results of plural marriages as manifest in the intelligence, physical strength as well as in the features of the offspring of these relations are, and ever will be, man’s ever-able testimonies against those who assume to criticise, oppose and condemn this divine law.[3]

[BH] Roberts however argues in the above quote that the motivation behind polygamy was to allow men and women of superior moral qualities to populate the earth, in preparation for the great destiny to come. Although he uses the words race and eugenics, no where does he imply that polygamy was intended to raise up seed that was physically superior to the rest of human kind. ...

Note: While I am interested in the history of Mormon uses of eugenics, my primary interest here is in examining the inherently positive representations by Mormons after 1890 of their polygamous past (shaped by their participation in eugenics discourse) and how these positive representations should be understood in light of the trend of downplaying polygamy in other contexts. For a good summary of the overall history of Mormon participation in eugenics discourse, see the link to Sterling’s post in comment #1.

[1] Susa Young Gates, “A Message From a Woman of the Latter-day Saints to the Women of All the World,” Improvement Era 10, no. 5 (March 1907):

[2] Josiah Edwin Hickman, “The Offspring of the Mormon People,” Journal of Heredity 15 (1924): 55-68.

[3] A Missionary Boy, “Tribute to Mother,” Improvement Era 5, no. 3 (January 1902):

The comment section then noticed similarites between Nietzche and Roberts. Excerpts the Comments:

George Q. Cannon and other 19th century figures vehemently defended the eugenic effect of polygamy. Stirling has a good write-up here, and the comments are great.

I remember Talmage writing in Jesus the Christ about an intergenerational crescendo of the spirit, which is similar to the idea of superior moral traits.

Comment by J. Stapley — March 5, 2008

Thanks for that link, J. Sterling really did a bang-up job with that post. He reproduced a variation of the TWL quote from the CHC that does seem to imply a physical dimension.

"It was in the name of a divinely ordered species of eugenics that Latter Day Saints accepted the revelation which included a plurality of wives. Polygamy would have afforded the opportunity of producing from that consecrated fatherhood and motherhood the improved type of man the world needs to reveal the highest possibilities of the race, that the day of the super man might come, and with him come also the redemption and betterment of the race." (Comprehensive History 5:297, 1930 ed., first published in 1912).

I’m intrigued by the reference to the “super man.” I’m not an expert on Nietzsche, but that sounds like it’s derivative of his writings.

Comment by David G. — March 5, 2008

...  I’ve heard that Pres. Hinckley repeated the narrative during a mission presidents conference during the 1990s, as he looked out over the audience and said that he marveled at the good that polygamy had produced. So any argument that Pres. Hinckley always downplayed polygamy is shortsighted, imo.

Comment by David G. — March 5, 2008 

J.’s comment #1 and Ben’s #3 are actually directly tied together. George Q. Cannon’s descendants are clear evidence that plural marriage was successful in producing a superior race.

Comment by Christopher — March 5, 2008 

I worked as a research assistant for a short time, searching the archived official papers of John A. Widtsoe from his presidency of what was then the Utah Agricultural College (Utah State University now). I found several letters in that collection, wherein Widtsoe expressed approval for eugenics, including inviting speakers on the subject to address the student body. I wonder now if this was connected to the plural marriage justifications described above.

Comment by Nick Literski  

... maybe David was right that Roberts was borrowing from Nietzsche.

Comment by Christopher 

. A few years ago I noted that [“Indications point to the fact that as a rule the children of polygamous marriages were superior physically and mentally.”] appeared in What of the Mormons? (1947).

Comment by Justin 

My reading of the “superman” quote might be wrong, but it sounds to me like a reference to Christ. Though, I guess that Roberts might have been reading Nietzsche.

Comment by Joel

 

I don’t think Nietzche is among the books in the BH Roberts memorial libray (anyone got a BYU Studies edition of TWL? they’re listed in the back), though that doesn’t mean BH hadn’t read or wasn’ aware of Nietzche, though I don’t know that Nietzche was really that popular until a bit later (but I really don’t know).

Susa Young Gates also published an article in the North American Review in which she asserts that it is a well-known fact that the children of polygamous families (ie, herself) were intellectually and physically superior to those of even monogamous Mormon families.

Comment by Stan 

Stan: Nietzche is not listed in the appendix. Another possibility is that Roberts is getting Nietzche filtered through a work on Eugenics, but I know next to nothing about the eugenicists use of Nietzche.

Comment by David G.