I've often wondered where Smith got his descriptions of the afterlife as first described in Section 76 of the D&C.
In D. Michael Quinn's excellent book "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," he gives a very fascinating source of Smith's "revelations." Quinn offers an exhaustive examination of the sources for the 1832 D&C Section 76 "Vision" of the "three degrees of glory."
In fact, Smith's description of the "Celestial Kingdom" was not only a copy from earlier written works, but also VERY controversial to the Latter-Day Saints.
The diaries of Orson Pratt and John Murdock from the 1830's record their efforts to reassure members who questioned the 1832 vision of heaven. The two men described countless excommunications of Mormons, including branch presidents, who denounced "the degrees of glory" as a "satanic revelation." Even Brigham Young had a hard time with it at first and described it as "a trial to many."
Why were Mormons choking on this idea of three heavens?
Quinn explains that it's because members correctly recognized it as coming from the occult. The only other sources of separate degrees in heaven came from occult writers during and before Smith's time.
For example, in 1784 a man by the name of Emanuel Swedenborg wrote a book about his visions of the afterlife. Swedenborg insisted: "There are three heavens," described as "entirely distinct from each other." He called the highest heaven "the Celestial Kingdom," and stated that the inhabitants of the three heavens corresponded to the "sun, moon and stars."
By Joseph Smith's own statements, he was familiar with Swedenborg's writings. Smith told a convert by the name of Edward Hunter that "Emanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come, but for daily food he perished." In other words, Smith liked Swedenborg's concepts of the afterlife, but criticized him for not profiting from them.
I was so fascinated by the connection that Quinn documented, that I bought a copy of Swedenborg's book myself from Amazon.com. It's called "Heaven and its Wonders and Hell from Things Heard and Seen", and was written way before Joseph Smith. Yet it describes the three Mormon degrees of glory to the tee, along with many other concepts including "the veil," "spirit prison," "celestial marriage," and more.
Not only does Quinn make a strong case that Smith knew all about Swedenborg's ideas, but he also shows that his book "Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell" was a book in Smith's hometown library since 1817. Quinn also writes that "Nine miles from Smith's farm, in 1826 the Canandaigua newspaper also advertised Swedenborg's book for sale. The bookstore offered Swedenborg's publications for as little as 37 cents."
If you ever want to know details about the Mormon afterlife, read Swedenborg's book. Smith liberally plagiarized from it to come up with his D&C "visions" of the celestial, telestial and terrestrial kingdoms. But Swedenborg's works are definitely the originals.
Read it online here:
http://swedenborg.newearth.org/hh/hh00toc.html
****My Thoughts****
Just perusing the chapter headings should be convincing enough. Which came first, Swedenborg or Joseph Smith? Maybe a quick comparison between "A View of the Hebrews" and the Book of Mormon would shed some light as well.
No, I don't believe Joe was inspired at all. At best he was delusional---seeing visions and claiming God speaks to you would be enough to get you locked up these days. At worst, he was a purposeful con-artist, trying to elude his partner money-diggers, and build up his reputation as a skillful seer by "finding" an ancient scripture and claiming to have been 'chosen' to translate it.
I don't think he intended to create a church, but the people who followed him and believed in his powers gave him the momentum to organize a church, become their leader, and then claim "sole" divine authority to proclaim God's word, (after too many followers started looking into their own seer stones and receiving their own revelations). That's why the official first vision story that supposedly occurred in 1820 didn't get written or published until 1838. Nobody in the original church even knew anything about Moroni or the appearance of God and Jesus to Joseph until it was written 18 years later. It does not make since for Joe to claim that he was continually persecuted for saying he saw an angel, when he didn't even share that story with the public until many years AFTER the Book of Mormon was published.
An interesting side note: Joseph was named author and proprietor of the original 1830 manuscript. Wanna see?
If you're interested, it's for sale on Ebay for a paltry $59,000. (for eight more days)
If only I could sell a kidney, or had some sort of trust fund, then I could read for myself the many textural changes between the 1830 version and subsequent editions. Well, why should I have to have the actual book in front of me, when dozens of people have done the research already? It's just a matter of who you choose to listen too...
An LDS member already knows that they can't read material that isn't supplied to them by the church. They also know that they shouldn't be checking out anti-Mormon sites on the internet, since it may lead them to 'doubt' the faith. My question is: What is the church worried about? They have the truth on their side, and truth should be able to withstand scrutiny...
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