Books

Edtor’s note:  This is the introduction of the book The Blessings of Abraham: Becoming a Zion People, which will be serialized in Meridian on Wednesdays.  Click here for the prologue and foreword, which appeared in Meridian last week.

In the spring of 1820 in upstate New York, when a fourteen-year-old farm boy knelt in a secluded grove of trees to pray, the scene was one of history’s most dramatic reenactments. Some three and a half millennia earlier, another fourteen-year-old had similarly sought the Creator in the solitude of prayer. His name was Abram, and the blessings that ensued from that prayer would change his life, his name, and the very course of history.

The later prayer of Joseph Smith, a descendant of Abraham, turned the key to restore the blessings of Abraham and fulfill God’s promises to the ancient Patriarch, opening the curtain on the great Abrahamic drama of the latter days.

As the drama proceeded and the youthful prophet Joseph Smith received revelation after revelation, one theme repeatedly stood out in what God told his people: their mission was to build Zion, ^[1] a task, the Prophet would say, that should be “our greatest object.” ^[2]

And just what is Zion? As the revelations make clear, it is a condition of heart that we are commanded to live now, as well as an order of things that we are commanded to create and that will someday prevail on the earth – again. ^[3] For as only Latter-day Saints know, ^[4] there was once on this planet in the days of Enoch a society of such beauty, harmony, and goodness that the Lord deigned literally to dwell there, and then actually removed it from this world to a place of paradisiacal glory. ^[5] There it remains pristine and preserved to this day, awaiting its literal return to earth in the last days. ^[6]

The last days are now, say the revelations, ^[7] and we are the people God has chosen to build Zion here below in preparation for the return of the ancient Zion. As we “move the cause of Zion” (D&C 21:7) foreward to fulfill our mission, we find ourselves in common cause with the Saints and prophets of ages past, who, as the Prophet Joseph explained, looked ahead longingly to the glorious events of our day.

The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age.  It is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with peculiar delight.  They have looked forward with joyful anticipation to the day in which we live, and, fired with heavenly and joyful anticipations, they have sung and written and prophesied of this our day.  But they died without the sight.

We are the favored people that God has made choice of to bring about the Latter-day glory.  It is left for us to see, participate in and help to roll forward the Latter-day glory, “the dispensation of the fulness of times, when God will gather together all things that are in heaven, and all things that are upon the earth,” “even in one,” when the Saints of God will be gathered in one from every nation, and kindred, and people, and tongue, when the Jews will be gathered together into one, the wicked will also be gathered together to be destroyed, as spoken of by the prophets; the Spirit of God will also dwell with His people, and be withdrawn from the rest of the nations, and all things whether in heaven or on earth will be in one, even in Christ.

The heavenly Priesthood will unite with the earthly, to bring about those great purposes; and whilst we are thus united in one common cause, to roll forth the kingdom of God, the heavenly Priesthood are not idle spectators, the Spirit of God will be showered down from above, and it will dwell in our midst.

The blessings of the Most High will rest upon our tabernacles, and our name will be handed down to future ages; our children will rise up and call us blessed; and generations yet unborn will dwell with peculiar delight upon the scenes that we have passed through, the privations that we have endured; the untiring zeal that we have manifested; the all but insurmountable difficulties that we have overcome in laying the foundation of a work that brought about the glory and blessing which they will realize – a work that God and angels have contemplated with delight for generations past, that fired the souls of the ancient patriarchs and prophets; a work that is destined to bring about the destruction of the powers of darkness, the renovation of the earth, the glory of God, and the salvation of the human family. ^[8]

A Pattern to Build Zion

So how are we to go about such a great work? Unfortunately, the view of Enoch’s Zion that we are granted even in restored scripture is merely a distant glimpse in a few captivating but short verses. “What happened,” asks Hugh Nibley, “in th[at] earthly city of Zion, between the lines of those … brief verses?” ^[9] We are not told, and are left craving to know what the inhabitants of Enoch’s Zion did to attain such glory.

But at least we know of Zion in restored scripture, whereas the traditional version of Genesis fails so much as to mention that it ever existed.

In fact, the history in Genesis for that early age of the world is like a wide-angle lens quickly panning the landscape.  Then suddenly the story undergoes a dramatic change of focus. With the entrance of Abraham at the end of chapter 11, the camera zooms in for a close-up of this one man and his wife, the first woman to be named in the Bible after mother Eve. The lens will never leave Abraham and Sarah, ^[10] showing the particulars of their lives through some twelve chapters, and providing us with far more personal detail than for any other Old Testament character or couple either before or after them.

Then, without missing a beat, the biblical camera lens turns to their chosen line, Isaac and then Jacob, and their posterity, for whom ever afterward the God of heaven is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

But it is Abraham and Sarah who continue to hold the most prominent place of honor in the biblical record, as seen in the record of Isaiah.

The value of Isaiah’s prophetic words to Saints of old is indicated by the fact that he is not only the most quoted prophet in the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but his writings were also emphatically endorsed by the resurrected Lord himself who commanded the Nephites to “search” Isaiah’s prophecies “diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah.” Great not only for providing divine principles to live by, but great for what they foretell of the future: “For surely he spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of Israel,” continued the Savior, “and all things that he spake have been and shall be, even according to the words which he spake” (3 Ne. 23:1).

The last Book of Mormon author, the solitary survivor Moroni, likewise urged his future readers to “search the prophecies of Isaiah,” adding that “as the Lord liveth, he will remember the covenant” (Morm. 8:23).

Searching Isaiah’s great words we find that God confers upon Abraham the distinction of being “my friend” (Isa. 41:8[11] – or, as better translated, “my beloved friend.” ^[12] Isaiah further insists on a key connection between Zion and Abraham.

Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the LORD: look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bare you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him. For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody. (Isa. 51:1-3)[13]

Those who would seek to build Zion are look to Abraham, insists Isaiah.

Restoration of Knowledge about Abraham

The early Latter-day Saints, charged with the mission of building Zion, had good reason to believe that the Lord was about to provide them with additional information about their forefather Abraham. The Book of Mormon, published just weeks before the organization of the Church in 1830, not only emphasized the pivotal role of Abraham and his covenant in the last days (3 Ne. 16:4-7), but prophesied that the great latter-day restoration would be of “great worth” to a branch of Abraham’s posterity in “bringing them to the knowledge of their fathers” and “the knowledge of the covenants” made to those ancient fathers (2 Ne. 3:7, 12). ^[14]

Such information was not long in coming. Within a year after the organization of the Church, ^[15] Joseph Smith had completed the Abrahamic portion of Genesis in his inspired translation of the Bible, which added significant passages to the biblical story of Abraham. ^[16] Just four years later, in 1835, the Prophet Joseph felt impressed to purchase some Egyptian scrolls that turned out to include a unique treasure: an autobiographical account of Abraham.

Time pressures and priorities delayed work on the translation, ^[17] which was finally completed in 1842 and received with unbounded enthusiasm. Wilford Woodruff, who helped set the type for its publication in the Nauvoo paper Times and Seasons beginning in March 1842, rejoiced in the book’s “great and glorious” truths, “which are among the rich treasures that are revealed unto us in the last days.” ^[18]

With this certain knowledge that authentic Abrahamic traditions had survived outside of the corpus of the biblical text, Latter-day Saint leaders eagerly took notice of yet additional ancient sources that began to emerge about Abraham. In September of that same year, the Prophet Joseph Smith penned an article for Times and Seasons mentioning Abraham’s story as told not only in the Book of Abraham but also in another nonbiblical source published just two years earlier ^[19] in New York, namely the Book of Jasher – “which has not been disproved as a bad author,” the Prophet noted. ^[20]

His open-minded attitude to this type of noncanonical material appears to have been shaped by the revelation he had received years earlier concerning the Apocrypha, the fourteen quasi-canonical books translated by the King James translators. The Prophet was not required, the Lord had said, to translate this material with the rest of the Bible, for the Apocrypha contained “many things … that are not true, which are interpolations by the hands of men.” However, it also contained “many things … that are true, and it is mostly translated correctly,” so that “whoso readeth it, let him understand, for the Spirit manifesteth truth; and whoso is enlightened by the Spirit shall obtain benefit therefrom” (D&C 91:1-6).

Among those seeking benefit from the Jasher account of Abraham were Brigham Young, John Taylor, and Wilford Woodruff, all of whom repeated in their public sermons to the Saints the Jasher story of young Abraham smashing his father’s idols. ^[21] The 1840 edition of Jasher was even reprinted in Salt Lake City beginning in 1887, making it widely available to the Saints.

The eagerness with which they looked forward to further information about Abraham is seen in the remarks made by Franklin D. Richards in the 1892 Church general conference. Decades earlier, he had compiled the Pearl of Great Price, including the Book of Abraham, and now he spoke with enthusiasm about yet other nonbiblical sources of information about the Patriarch. “The Bible tells us but very little about him,” Elder Richards noted, “but other histories inform us further.” He then summarized several legends from Jasher and mentioned the Qur’an as a source of Abrahamic material. ^[22]

Just six years later, the Latter-day Saints were treated to one of the most important ancient Abrahamic texts ever to emerge. In 1898 a Church member noticed an article in a San Francisco newspaper by a German Professor Bonwetsch about a text called the Apocalypse of Abraham, with a partial translation. The previous year Bonwetsch had published a German translation of the entire work. Obtaining his permission, the Improvement Era, the official Church publication, translated the German to English and published it – the first full English translation, and the only one for some twenty years.

The Apocalypse of Abraham, like the Book of Abraham, is written in first person, and tells not only of Abraham’s fight against idolatry but also of his remarkable heavenly visions. The Improvement Era’s introduction included the disclaimer that “how much of this story … is tinged with fable” versus “how much represents the true visions of the patriarch Abraham … we cannot pretend to say,” but from the first it had been seen to contain “many things of a character both as to incidents and doctrines that [are] parallel with what is recorded in the Book of Abraham.” Such parallels included “especially … the idolatrous character of Abraham’s immediate forefathers, his call to depart from them, the future promise of a special inheritance, the fact of his receiving a special revelation from God, making known great things concerning the structure of the heavens and the earth, the pre-existence of the spirits of men, and the choice of certain of them to be God’s rulers in the earth, Abraham being among them. All these corroborating facts . . . [are] intensely interesting and important.” ^[23]

Had the Saints then had access to the Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of Genesis, they would have seen yet another remarkable corroboration in that both the JST and the Apocalypse of Abraham, referring to the same event in Abraham’s life, assert that he saw in vision the ministry of the mortal Messiah. ^[24] And if the Saints had scoured the record of the Journal of Discourses, they would have discovered intriguing statements by two of their most prominent leaders, statements about Abraham that were now corroborated by the Apocalypse of Abraham.

n the Church’s 1874 semiannual general conference, Elder Wilford Woodruff stated that Abraham had seen in vision the last days and “the dispensation of the fulness of times” and the building up of “the great Zion of God,” as well as the millennial “reign of righteousness.” ^[25] A few years later, in 1881, President John Taylor declared that “through the spirit of prophecy” Abraham “had gazed upon his posterity as they should exist through the various ages of time.” ^[26]

The amazing thing about both these statements is that when made they were entirely unsupported by any known ancient text, either scriptural or apocryphal. To this day, these statements remain without parallel in any scriptural text, but they are now in fact paralleled by several passages in apocryphal texts, the first of which to emerge was (and the most important of which still is) the Apocalypse of Abraham. It describes Abraham’s vision of his posterity through the generations, including his latter-day posterity, and the glorious coming of the Messiah to bless that posterity. ^[27]

It remains remarkable that the Apocalypse of Abraham, an extremely ancient and important text, would come forth in English translation first among the Latter-day Saints, corroborating what their leaders had stated by inspiration and providing further information about their exemplary forefather.  (For further background on this and other key sources and commentators cited in this work, please see the glossary included in this volume.) 

An Astonishing Outpouring of Forgotten Texts

Yet other texts continued to emerge, slowly at first. A few were published by R. H. Charles in the first part of the twentieth century. ^[28] But the pace began to accelerate with the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the Genesis Apocryphon – yet another autobiographical account of the Patriarch. In the ensuing decades, the emergence of yet other ancient biblical-related texts grew rapidly.

Many of these claimed to have been composed originally by early biblical figures like Abraham and Enoch and even Adam, and although once used as authentic texts in early Jewish and Christianity communities, they had long since been set aside, lost, or otherwise forgotten. Their sudden recovery from oblivion after many centuries is hailed as something of a miracle even by secular scholars. “By the strangest quirk of fate respecting literature that I know of,” wrote Samuel Sandmel in 1983, “large numbers of writings by Jews were completely lost from the transmitted Jewish heritage … Now … a door is being opened anew to treasures that are very old.” ^[29]

Hugh Nibley’s assessment is similar, referring to that “astonishing outpouring of ancient writings that is the peculiar blessing of our generation.” ^[30] Part of the blessing is the remarkable corroboration that these newly emerged writings offer to the prior latter-day revelations and texts, a phenomenon noted even by no less a figure than Harold Bloom. In one of his widely read books, the prominent Bloom, not a Latter-day Saint, called attention to Joseph Smith’s “uncanny recovery of elements in ancient Jewish theurgy that had ceased to be available either to normative Judaism or to Christianity, and that had survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched Smith directly.” ^31]

Bloom further called Joseph Smith “an authentic religious genius, unique in our national history,” with “insight [that] could have come only from a remarkably apt reading of the Bible … So strong was this act of reading that it broke through all the orthodoxies – Protestant, Catholic, Judaic – and found its way back to elements that Smith rightly intuited had been censored out of the stories of the archaic Jewish religion.”[32]

Such vindication of the Prophet Joseph’s work was prophesied by himself: “The world will prove Joseph Smith a true prophet by circumstantial evidence,” ^[33] he foretold.

The corroboration provided by the emerging Abrahamic texts may also possibly be part of what the Lord foretold in the Book of Mormon regarding the coming forth of sacred records in the latter days from various nations: the newly emerged records will corroborate each other in dramatic evidence of their authenticity (2 Ne. 29:8) at the same time the Lord will prove to the world that he covenanted with Abraham that he would remember his posterity forever (2 Ne. 29:14).

Hence while some scholars today question whether Abraham ever really existed, Latter-day Saints know better. The authentic scriptural Abraham texts given to them as part of the great Restoration have now been dramatically corroborated by the emergence of additional long-forgotten ancient texts.

But these texts do even more than corroborate. They also give much additional detail about the life of Abraham, consistent with the foundational Abrahamic sources already provided by the Restoration. Such detail is a welcome source of information to Latter-day Saints, who have been expressly commanded by the Savior: “Do the works of Abraham” (D&C 132:32).

Look to Abraham

The Savior’s commandment echoes what he had declared anciently through the prophet Isaiah, that the righteous are to look to Abraham. But that the commandment was repeated after the Savior’s mortal ministry may appear remarkable. The Savior came, as President Harold B. Lee taught, not only to atone for our sins, but also to set the perfect example for us. Indeed, only He as the Son of God was capable of perfection, said Joseph Smith. ^[34]

Only Jesus the Christ can and does invite all to follow Him (2 Ne. 31:10; D&C 38:22; 56:2) and to be as He is (3 Ne. 27:27). “I have set an example for you,” he invitingly informs us (3 Ne. 18:16). Why, then, has He, the only Perfect One, selected from the ranks of the rest of us one additional examplar?

Maybe because Abraham’s life demonstrates how closely it is possible to emulate that of the Savior. “In the aspect of his character,” wrote W. F. P. Noble, “Abraham was more like Jesus Christ, stood nearer the most illustrious of his descendants, than perhaps any man.” ^[35] Ancient sources uniformly attest to the godly character of Abraham, who “feared … God from his youth,” says the book of Jasher, “and … served the Lord … from childhood to the day of his death.” ^[36]

The fourth-century Christian writer Epiphanius called Abraham “perfection itself in godliness,”^[37] while the ancient book of Jubilees records he was “perfect in all of his actions with the LORD and was pleasing through righteousness all the days of his life.” ^[38] In the words of Josephus, Abraham was “a man outstanding in every virtue,” ^[39] while the Muslim scholar al-Thalabi insisted that the great Patriarch “combined many qualities of goodness and virtue, such as is usually gathered in a nation.[40]

Abraham’s earliest biographer, Philo of Alexandria, said of him that he was “one who obeyed the law, some will say, but rather … [was] himself a law and an unwritten statute.” ^[41] Laws later given to Israel were, according to Philo, nothing more than reminders of their illustrious forefather, “whose love for God and, especially, whose faith or trust in God qualifies him as ‘the law itself.’[42]

Such statements are borne out by the expanded picture we now have of the great Patriarch, whose life shines with the striking brilliance of a rare and flawless jewel of many facets. The laws of obedience, sacrifice, living the gospel, purity, and consecration are all perfectly illustrated by Abraham, who is is the epitome also of faith, hope, and charity, and every godly trait.

And if charity, or the pure love of Christ, is the greatest of all, then Abraham’s qualification stands supreme, being forever remembered in Judaism as “the man of kindness”[43] and the very incarnation of love.

In short, his life leads us surely and powerfully to the Savior himself and the blessings he offers all mankind. “As we follow Abraham’s example,” explained President Kimball, “we will grow from grace to grace, we will find greater happiness and peace and rest, we will find favor with God and with man. As we follow his example, we will confirm upon ourselves and our families joy and fulfillment in this life and for all eternity.” ^[44]

The transformative power of Abraham’s example was known anciently, as expressed by the medieval Jewish sage Maimonides: whoever follows the path of Abraham “brings benefit and blessing to himself.” ^[45]

And not just to oneself, for the collective work of building Zion can be accomplished only by following the blueprint of Abraham’s life. “Only by ‘doing the works of Abraham,'” says Hugh Nibley, “can we hope to establish … that order of Zion” long lost from the earth. ^[46]

But if Abraham demonstrated how to build Zion, he also foreshadowed it in remarkable ways. His life is “a lesson of the future,” ^[47] according to Jewish tradition, which holds that everything Abraham did prefigured what would happen to his posterity. This is particularly the case, as we shall see, regarding the lives of his descendants Jesus and Joseph Smith, but it is no less so for latter-day Zion collectively, whose destiny is Abraham’s life writ large. At the same time, his life is a reflection of the heroes of Zion past, making him a uniquely central figure.

“Abraham is squarely in the middle,” explains Hugh Nibley. “All things seem to zero in on him. He has been called ‘the most pivotal and strategic figure in all of human history.’ In his position he binds all things together and gives meaning and purpose to everything that happened.” ^[48]

But even more than prefiguring the destiny of his descendants, Abraham actually secured it by the covenants God made to him. For as the Book of Mormon emphasizes, those covenants speak directly to the ultimate victory of latter-day Zion. “I will show unto them that fight against my … people,” the Lord declares, “that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever” (2 Ne. 29:14). And as with the final destiny of Zion, so with its founding and rolling forth, all secured by the Abrahamic covenant, whose fulfillment includes the opening of the heavens to Joseph Smith and the restoration and establishment of God’s latter-day kingdom as Israel is gathered and all nations and families are blessed through Abraham’s seed.

Abraham’s covenant is equally efficacious for Latter-day Saints individually and as couples, who, being of Abraham, are heir to the same promise made to him that his seed would be as the sand of the seashore and the stars of heaven. The promise includes the blessing of endless increase of posterity for those who achieve exaltation in Celestial glory, where, we are told, Abraham already sits on his throne as a god and a model of that eternal life awaiting those who become his seed by accepting the gospel, magnifying the priesthood, and making and keeping the same temple covenants that Abraham made and kept.

As we follow the Lord’s counsel to look to Abraham, we will also discover that his life is a story of high drama set in a dark and decadent world uncannily like our own. It is a tale of grave danger and divine deliverance, of deep anguish and overwhelming joy, of difficult trials and signal triumphs, and of some unusual encounters and events the likes of which the world has not seen since.

Stranger and more exciting than fiction, the account of Abraham is certainly one of the most intriguing on record, revealing a man of such unusual faith and love and compassion as to demonstrate the heights that mortals can reach in becoming truly Christlike.

For Latter-day Saints, then, Abraham is more than just another interesting figure from scriptural history whose life might be studied casually or occasionally. He looms large in latter-day revelation, as well as in the teachings of latter-day prophets, as simply indispensable to our work in qualifying for the blessings of coming unto Christ and building Zion.

The life of Abraham also happens to be one of the world’s greatest love stories.  To refer to Abraham or tell his story is necessarily to include Sarah. They were a team working in perfect harmony, mutually dependent and wholly committed to each other and the greater good of the marriage and the mission God had given them. If she is mentioned less in the book than he, she was no less important, nor, I am convinced, would she feel slighted in the least.

Jewish tradition emphasizes not only that her life was a tapestry of perfection, ^[49] but that her prophetic power and spiritual capacity in certain ways actually exceeded that of her husband. ^[50] Despite her superlative talent, she never sought the limelight, operating in perfect partnership with her husband – whom she loved totally and followed in some of the most difficult trials imaginable.

Together Abraham and Sarah built Zion, and together they are to be remembered by their righteous posterity who aspire to build Zion. Together they teach us how to build Zion and qualify for the very blessings once bestowed on them for their faithfulness.

“Come,” invites a rabbinic text, “and learn from Abraham.” ^[51] Or, as the early Christian writer Ephrem the Syrian urged, “See the works of Abraham.” ^[52] And see, thereby, the blessings of Abraham and how they may be attained. For as Elder Franklin D. Richards declared, “They that would inherit the blessings of Abraham, must do the works of Abraham.” ^[53]