This was such a good post. The Orthodox view makes so much sense. The end of your article is very true. Many people have a very reductive view of definitions now that most words are beginning to lose their meaning (we see this a lot when it comes to genders and pronouns). The Mormon church also demands you accept their pronouns without any evidence. It’s hard to have logical discussion because their belief is rooted in a feeling, not reason. Have you seen “Spiritual Witnesses” on YouTube?
It would be interesting to see a future post of the similarities between Kabbalah and Mormonism and potential influences.
Thanks for the kind feedback. I have not seen "Spiritual Witnesses" on YouTube, is this a channel or a specific video? Could you DM me a link? Thanks. I would also like to talk to you about comments you had on another video I saw recently - the discussion between a trinitarian philosopher and Jacob Hansen. I wasn't entirely sure where you were going with some of those comments.
In terms of Kabbalah, it's interesting and I will give it some thought, but this is my initial gut reaction to the idea.(Sorry, it's long, my brain goes in 100 directions at once so I'm trying to corral my thoughts into something that makes sense.)
I don't have a thorough knowledge about the Kabbalah so I'd have to come up to speed and that would take quite a bit of time. I'd likely have to rely on AI *a lot.*
I know that the Zohar is the foundational work of Kabbalah, and that there are some things in the Zohar that at least thematically seem to have made it into LDS thinking (particularly LDS cosmology,) but illustrating and arguing for any kind of transmission of ideas into mormonism would be highly speculative, and I think you'd need to illustrate that with some degree of confidence; and evidence for causal transmission doesn't seem to exist. Talking about the correlation of ideas could be interesting, but correlation does not equal causation. So, what is the article really going to be about? What point am I going to be trying to make? Maybe you can help me better understand what your interest would be.
Joshua Seixas tutored Joseph in 1836, and is a possible source of exposure to these ideas, because its unlikely that Joseph had access to a copy of the Zohar he could have read, and there is no historical documentation that Seixas or his family were into the kaballah (though he was a Sephardic Jew and apparently they have a connection with the Kabbalah - maybe that's a thread to pull on? if so, the timelines of these ideas and their emergence in LDS teaching also needs to line up. I'd also need to learn a lot more about Sephardic Jews as I know very little about them.)
The Zohar itself is written in aramaic, copies of it in America were extremely rare and there were no significant english translations in the 19th century. However, many of these ideas come through both Kabbalah and Hermeticism (which influenced each other), the latter shows up in Joseph's mileau in many different forms, including astrology, alchemy, masonry, folk magic, pop culture spiritualism and occultism, but arguing for any transmission of these ideas into mormonism via Joseph is going to be very speculative.
The most I could do is likely argue that cultural currents and thematic resonance in Joseph's environment made it into his thinking and thus into mormon thought. I may also need to argue the same thing for Seixas (and/or make a strong case for his being well steeped in Kabbalah.) That's still highly speculative in my mind (Multiplying speculation by speculation just makes the case for potential influence far worse and even less like, the combinatorial probability gets far far worse.) My major was in engineering and I strongly prefer things that don't rely on such tenuous connections, so my initial inclination is to be avoidant to such things.
I think it would be an interesting topic to explore, but due to the lack of any direct documented connection between Joseph Smith and Kabbalistic sources, I suspect that any conclusions would be highly speculative; and that seems like a lot of work to end with pure speculation and a topic that is likely to have exceedingly narrow interest to readers (really just intellectual religious study nerds like us.) I'm not saying I won't write something like this, but I am concerned about what the result would look like and what the resulting article would be.
Off the top of my head, possible outcomes seem to be:
* At best an interesting article about thematic parallels between highly obscure religious traditions with very narrow audiences of interest? (that only a couple people read)
* At the worst, a piece of highly dubious "anti-mormon" tripe that adds absolutely no value to the discussion? (that just turns people off)
I really don't want to do the latter (not because I'm worried about offending people, but b/c I don't see a high utility.) One could perhaps argue I've done that already in the past and that this would just be more of the same from me? Maybe. I would like to think that I haven'd done this, but readers might have a different perspective and I acknowledge that my ASD makes it difficult for me to assess this.
I just sent it to you, it’s a YouTube video. Are you referring to Mormonism and monism?
Regarding the connections between Mormonism and Kabbalah, you’re actually correct. There is no direct proof that Joseph Smith ripped off of Kabbalah. I’ve read an article a long time ago now about the similarities between faiths that was interesting. Reading your insert about the Kabbalistic view of the fall just reminded me of that. If anything I can find that article and send it over to you just for a fun read.
This was such a good post. The Orthodox view makes so much sense. The end of your article is very true. Many people have a very reductive view of definitions now that most words are beginning to lose their meaning (we see this a lot when it comes to genders and pronouns). The Mormon church also demands you accept their pronouns without any evidence. It’s hard to have logical discussion because their belief is rooted in a feeling, not reason. Have you seen “Spiritual Witnesses” on YouTube?
It would be interesting to see a future post of the similarities between Kabbalah and Mormonism and potential influences.
Keep up the good work! I hope you’re doing well!
HI Danial.
Thanks for the kind feedback. I have not seen "Spiritual Witnesses" on YouTube, is this a channel or a specific video? Could you DM me a link? Thanks. I would also like to talk to you about comments you had on another video I saw recently - the discussion between a trinitarian philosopher and Jacob Hansen. I wasn't entirely sure where you were going with some of those comments.
In terms of Kabbalah, it's interesting and I will give it some thought, but this is my initial gut reaction to the idea.(Sorry, it's long, my brain goes in 100 directions at once so I'm trying to corral my thoughts into something that makes sense.)
I don't have a thorough knowledge about the Kabbalah so I'd have to come up to speed and that would take quite a bit of time. I'd likely have to rely on AI *a lot.*
I know that the Zohar is the foundational work of Kabbalah, and that there are some things in the Zohar that at least thematically seem to have made it into LDS thinking (particularly LDS cosmology,) but illustrating and arguing for any kind of transmission of ideas into mormonism would be highly speculative, and I think you'd need to illustrate that with some degree of confidence; and evidence for causal transmission doesn't seem to exist. Talking about the correlation of ideas could be interesting, but correlation does not equal causation. So, what is the article really going to be about? What point am I going to be trying to make? Maybe you can help me better understand what your interest would be.
Joshua Seixas tutored Joseph in 1836, and is a possible source of exposure to these ideas, because its unlikely that Joseph had access to a copy of the Zohar he could have read, and there is no historical documentation that Seixas or his family were into the kaballah (though he was a Sephardic Jew and apparently they have a connection with the Kabbalah - maybe that's a thread to pull on? if so, the timelines of these ideas and their emergence in LDS teaching also needs to line up. I'd also need to learn a lot more about Sephardic Jews as I know very little about them.)
The Zohar itself is written in aramaic, copies of it in America were extremely rare and there were no significant english translations in the 19th century. However, many of these ideas come through both Kabbalah and Hermeticism (which influenced each other), the latter shows up in Joseph's mileau in many different forms, including astrology, alchemy, masonry, folk magic, pop culture spiritualism and occultism, but arguing for any transmission of these ideas into mormonism via Joseph is going to be very speculative.
The most I could do is likely argue that cultural currents and thematic resonance in Joseph's environment made it into his thinking and thus into mormon thought. I may also need to argue the same thing for Seixas (and/or make a strong case for his being well steeped in Kabbalah.) That's still highly speculative in my mind (Multiplying speculation by speculation just makes the case for potential influence far worse and even less like, the combinatorial probability gets far far worse.) My major was in engineering and I strongly prefer things that don't rely on such tenuous connections, so my initial inclination is to be avoidant to such things.
I think it would be an interesting topic to explore, but due to the lack of any direct documented connection between Joseph Smith and Kabbalistic sources, I suspect that any conclusions would be highly speculative; and that seems like a lot of work to end with pure speculation and a topic that is likely to have exceedingly narrow interest to readers (really just intellectual religious study nerds like us.) I'm not saying I won't write something like this, but I am concerned about what the result would look like and what the resulting article would be.
Off the top of my head, possible outcomes seem to be:
* At best an interesting article about thematic parallels between highly obscure religious traditions with very narrow audiences of interest? (that only a couple people read)
* At the worst, a piece of highly dubious "anti-mormon" tripe that adds absolutely no value to the discussion? (that just turns people off)
I really don't want to do the latter (not because I'm worried about offending people, but b/c I don't see a high utility.) One could perhaps argue I've done that already in the past and that this would just be more of the same from me? Maybe. I would like to think that I haven'd done this, but readers might have a different perspective and I acknowledge that my ASD makes it difficult for me to assess this.
I just sent it to you, it’s a YouTube video. Are you referring to Mormonism and monism?
Regarding the connections between Mormonism and Kabbalah, you’re actually correct. There is no direct proof that Joseph Smith ripped off of Kabbalah. I’ve read an article a long time ago now about the similarities between faiths that was interesting. Reading your insert about the Kabbalistic view of the fall just reminded me of that. If anything I can find that article and send it over to you just for a fun read.
Anyways, thank you!
sure, send it over.