The temple has always been a special place to me. My first time going to the temple as a 12-year-old is a memory I will never forget. Sitting in white, I sat in the baptistry with my mother, taking it all in. For a period in high school, I would go to the temple by myself monthly to sit in the small forest on the Seattle temple property. That was a great comfort to me. When I received my initiatory, I felt like an army of temple workers were there just for my special day. My sister-in-law gave me good advice for the endowment: “Just relax, take it all in, and enjoy the experience.” So, I did, and I loved it. Through different seasons of my life, I have been to the temple more often and sometimes less often, but it has always been a place of contemplation and peace.

Critics emphasized to me how strange our temple is and how jarring it was going through for their first time. They talked about how traumatizing getting baptized in the temple several times was. They mention how boring or pointless the temple ceremonies are. None of this troubled me much. It wasn’t until I learned about the parallels between the temple endowment and freemasonry that I felt unsettled.

Freemasonry

Joseph Smith became a freemason on March 16, 1842, and introduced the temple endowment on May 3, 1842.³ Similarities (and many differences) exist between freemasonry and the temple endowment. Critics claim that the temple endowment came into being only after Joseph Smith became a freemason. If that is true, then how do critics explain the following?

• 20 years before he became a freemason, Joseph Smith’s First Vision contains echoes and allusions to the temple endowment.⁴
• In 1823, nearly 20 years before Joseph Smith Jr. became a freemason, he first saw the plates. Joseph Smith Sr. reported to a non-Mormon friend, Fayette Lapham, that the metal plates had a title page or cover page with the masonic symbols of the compass and the square, with the interpreters overlaid on top of them.⁵ Joseph Smith Sr. died in 1840, two years before Joseph Smith Jr. became a freemason.
• 14 years before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon translation had elements and indications of the temple endowment.⁶
• 13 years before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the book of Nephi was dictated containing elements of the temple endowment in Nephi’s and Lehi’s visions (1 Nephi 8-13).
• 13 years before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the Book of Mormon contains all of the elements of the temple endowment. In particular, King Benjamin’s address in the Book of Mosiah.⁷
  • King Benjamin’s sermon was for those who had proven themselves worthy (Mosiah 1:11)
  • A New Name (Mosiah 5:11-12)
  • A warning to not trifle with sacred things (Mosiah 2:9)
  • Discussion of the Creation, Garden of Eden, and the Fall of Adam Mosiah 2:20-41 and Mosiah 3:25-26, and Mosiah 4:7-8
  • Rebirth formula used at the coronation of kings and the imagery of a king seated on the right hand of God (Mosiah 5:7,9)
  • Obedience (Mosiah 5:2,5)
  • Sacrifice (Mosiah 2:3-4)
  • The Law of the Gospel (Mosiah 3 – Remission of sins through Jesus Christ. Mosiah 4 - Repentance, faith, keeping commandments, and care for the poor and needy.)
  • Chastity (Mosiah 4:30)
  • Consecration (Mosiah 2:34)
  • Taking upon us the name of Christ (Mosiah 5: 6-8)
  • Unified prayer offered, accompanied by a symbolic posture (Mosiah 4:1-3)
  • Promised sealing blessings (Mosiah 5:15)
• 13 years before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the book of Ether was translated, which contains elements of the temple endowment (Ether 3).
• Between 11 and 6 years before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the Lord told Joseph Smith that the Lord’s people are to be endowed with power (D&C 38:32, 38, D&C 95:8, D&C 105:12, 18, 33, D&C 110:9)
• 1 year before Joseph Smith became a freemason, the Lord revealed in D&C 124:39-42 (emphasis added):

  “Therefore, verily I say unto you, that your anointings, and your washings, and your baptisms for the dead, and your solemn assemblies, and your memorials for your sacrifices by the sons of Levi, and for your oracles in your most holy places wherein you receive conversations, and your statutes and judgments, for the beginning of the revelations and foundation of Zion, and for the glory, honor, and endowment of all her municipals, are ordained by the ordinance of my holy house, which my people are always commanded to build unto my holy name. And verily I say unto you, let this house be built unto my name, that I may reveal mine ordinances therein unto my people; For I deign to reveal unto my church things which have been kept hid from before the foundation of the world, things that pertain to the dispensation of the fulness of times. And I will show unto my servant Joseph all things pertaining to this house, and the priesthood thereof, and the place whereon it shall be built.”

How do critics account for the various parts of the endowment being present in Joseph Smith’s life and teachings long before the Nauvoo endowment ceremony was created in 1842?

In early 1838, Joseph Smith left Kirtland and the temple behind, and eventually, most of the saints did as well. Nearly a year later, from Liberty Jail in March 1839, he wrote the following in a personal letter:

“I never have had [the] opportunity to give [the Saints] the plan that God has revealed to me.”⁸

Later in 1839, Parly Pratt reports that Joseph,

“taught me many great and glorious principles concerning God and the heavenly order of eternity. It was at this time that I received from him the first idea of eternal family organization, and the eternal union of the sexes.” (emphasis added)⁹

Before the rollout of the endowment ceremony in 1842, it seemed clear that Joseph Smith had much more to say about the “great and glorious principles concerning God.”

Ancient Temple Connections

“I spent the day in the upper part of the store, … in council with General James Adams, of Springfield, Patriarch Hyrum Smith, Bishops Newel K. Whitney and George Miller, and President Brigham Young and Elders Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards, instructing them in the principles and order of the Priesthood, attending to washings, anointings, endowments and the communication of keys pertaining to the Aaronic Priesthood, and so on to the highest order of the Melchizedek Priesthood, setting forth the order pertaining to the Ancient of Days, and all those plans and principles by which anyone is enabled to secure the fullness of those blessings which have been prepared for the Church of the First Born, and come up and abide in the presence of the Eloheim in the eternal worlds. In this council was instituted the ancient order of things for the first time in these last days." - Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 5:1–2.

While some parallels exist between freemasonry and the Latter-day Saint temple endowment, the vast differences are the most informative. Unlike the freemasonry rituals, the temple emphasizes creation, fall, redemption, and enthronement concepts. These same ideas are a near-universal feature of temple rites in the ancient Near East,¹⁰ concepts that Joseph Smith would not have known about in 1842. Like freemasonry, ancient Near East rituals included ritualistic handclasps and sacred embraces.¹¹

Ancient Egyptian temple rites commonly emphasize six main topics, similar to the Latter-day Saint endowment but unlike freemasonry.¹² Namely, 1). Primordial written document on which the rites are based; 2). Purification through anointing, lustration, and clothing; 3). Creation; 4). Garden; 5). Travel; 6). Ascension, including victory, coronation, and admission to the heavenly company. Like ancient Near East temple rites, these topics would have been unknown in 1842. Moreover, ritualistic handclasps and sacred embraces are found throughout ancient Egyptian iconography.¹³ (Images below are courtesy of “The Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions” by Stephen Ricks in the Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship)

Figure 1: The Divine Horus (with a falcon head) embraces the Royal Horus on the Qa Hedjet Stela

Figure 2: Left: The pharaoh Senwosret faces the god Amon, who embraces him. Right: Senwosret is embraced by Ptah, who faces him from the left.

In ancient Chinese tradition, Fuxi and Nüwa are revered as the first humans created.¹⁴ On the right, Fuxi is usually depicted holding a square, while on the left, Nüwa holds a compass.¹⁵ Their story also shows temple patterns. Fuxi is often portrayed as “a man wearing animal skins.”¹⁶ He offered the first open-air sacrifice to heaven on a mountain and introduced the institution of marriage.¹⁷ As with the other ancient traditions, it is implausible that these ideas would have been known to Joseph Smith in 1842.

Source: Fuxi and Nüwa. Hanging scroll. Color on silk. Located at the Chinese History Museum. Image via Wikipedia. (On the left is Nüwa holding a compass and on the right is Fuxi holding a square.)

Early Christian writings and apocryphal texts discuss the following interesting parallels to our modern temple ceremony: Baptism for the dead, initiation (including washing, anointing, and investiture), new names, handclasps, secret words, prayer circles, passing the angels, admittance into God’s presence and so on.¹⁸ Joseph Smith would not have picked up most of these concepts in Freemasonry. Likewise, most of these early Christian texts would have been unavailable to him in 1842.

It is believed that when apocryphal and scriptural texts refer to “mystery,” the lost, intended meaning is “ordinance.”¹⁹ Compelling evidence suggests that Christ initiated his disciples into the “mysteries of the kingdom,” and those teachings perhaps persisted until the 5^th century AD.²⁰

How did Joseph Smith know about ancient, early Christian ceremonies/rituals only discovered after 1842? How did Joseph recover ancient temple practices and concepts without source material beyond his revelations?

Why do critics ignore these critical connections to modern temple ordinances?

If Joseph Smith and Brigham Young restored ancient temple rituals that date back to Adam's time, shouldn’t we expect to find many examples of those same ordinances, albeit altered, across cultures?

Once I considered rituals and symbols across time and different cultures, I saw shadows of the temple endowment in modern-day ceremonies. High school and college graduates wear special robes and transfer their graduation tassels from left to right. Witnesses in court lay their hand on a Bible and raise their arm to the square. A royal coronation is done in a particular place where the individual is consecrated with oil, an oath is administered at an altar, the oath includes questions and affirmative responses, the ceremony includes special clothing, caps or crowns are worn, and various tokens are brought forth to be held in specific hands.²¹

The reality is that the endowment has as many, if not more, connections to ancient temple traditions and coronation ceremonies as it does to Freemasonry. Why do critics emphasize the Freemasonry connections and completely ignore the more substantial ancient connections?

The more I understood about the temple, the more I asked myself, what ancient source connects all of these ritualistic and mythological traditions? I’ve learned that the symbols and themes of the latter-day saint endowment are everywhere. All I had to do was look.

Hezekiah, Josiah, and the Deuteronomists

Some biblical scholars, including non-Latter-day Saint Margaret Barker, deduce that King Hezekiah, around 750 BC, and later King Josiah, around 620 BC, initiated radical reforms to the Israelite religion and temple worship.²² The group that supported King Josiah in these reforms is called “the Deuteronomists” and is often credited with shaping the books of Deuteronomy, Judges, Joshua, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings. The theory is that after the Deuteronomists’ reforms, the Israelite religion was “de-Christianized.”²³ (emphasis added)

In 2 Kings 22:1-2 Josiah is portrayed as the story's hero, “And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the ways of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left.”

In 2 Chronicles 34: 3-7, King Josiah's reforms include purging Judah and Jerusalem. He purged the groves, carved images, and molten images. He broke down altars and burned the bones of the priests upon their altars, while beating graven images into powder.

Did Josiah do enough, or did he go too far?

“The key event was the great purge in the time of King Josiah at the end of the seventh century BCE, when everything that the Deuteronomists deemed impure was removed from the temple and destroyed (2 Kings 23). This is not an objective account, and it is easy to see that most of what King Josiah removed were the religious artifacts and practices of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and almost all the kings in Jerusalem. They had survived in the land until the sixth century BCE – sacred trees, pillars, places outside Jerusalem to offer sacrifice – but King Josiah removed everything that did not conform to the Moses religion as set out in Deuteronomy. In other words, the ‘Moses’ religion with the ten commandments and the Aaron priesthood did not finally replace the Abrahamic faith and the Melchizedek priesthood until just before the first temple was destroyed.” – Margaret Barker, “Temple Theology”²⁴

“Almost everything that Josiah swept away can be matched in the religion of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”²⁵

Ultimately, we do not know the extent of the changes made during King Josiah’s reform or how the temple ceremony changed.

It is believed that before the Josiah reforms, the Israelite religion taught about an atoning Messiah.²⁶ In the Book of Mormon, Lehi, a contemporary of King Josiah and the Deuteronomists, represented a faction of Israelites who did not appreciate the changes. The Jews wanting to kill Lehi when he prophesied of a Messiah (1 Nephi 1:19-20) places him acutely in conflict with the Deuteronomists. Laman and Lemuel classify the people of Jerusalem as righteous because they kept the laws of Moses (1 Nephi 17:22), which would put them in the camp of the pro-Josiah reformists.

It makes sense that Lehi would emphasize the atoning Messiah and the Tree of Life because those elements were believed to have been removed from temple worship during the reforms.²⁷ He was, in short, preserving the plain and precious truths. What is more precious than preserving the knowledge of the Messiah?

“After they had slain the Messiah, who should come, and after he had been slain he should rise from the dead, and should make himself manifest, by the Holy Ghost, unto the Gentiles… the remnants of the house of Israel should be grafted in, or come to the knowledge of the true Messiah, their Lord and their Redeemer.” (1 Nephi 10:11,14).

If this concept of pre-Josiah temple worship and Israelite religion is genuine, how did Joseph Smith know about them?

Nephi refers to the “plain and precious things which have been taken away” in 1 Nephi 13 in a prophecy of the last days. Was Nephi borrowing language from his father, Lehi, who had the same complaint about the gospel in his day?

From what we know, there are numerous probable connections between ancient pre-Josiah Israelite temples and modern Latter-day Saint temples. These include belief in a divine Father and Mother, the Tree of Life, teachings about the creation, fall, atonement, and a suffering Messiah who would gain victory over death.²⁸

How do critics account for these ancient connections in modern-day temple rituals? Was Joseph Smith just lucky?

Temple and Ancient Connections Conclusion

Depending on the day, I hear critics say that Joseph Smith was an anti-Mason and that the Gadianton robbers were fashioned after them. The next day, I could hear critics tell me that Joseph loved the Freemasons and plagiarized them. The reality is that the temple ordinances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have inexplicable ancient origins that Joseph Smith would not have known about. Plus, the temple initiatory and endowment elements were present in Joseph’s experience since the First Vision. During my search for more light and truth, I was astonished at Joseph Smith’s ability to restore ancient temple customs and practices. Crediting Joseph’s ability to restore ancient traditions solely on freemasonry is too simple. Freemasonry does not remotely explain this connection.

Footnotes

1. Gissen, Lillian. “Former Mormon lifts the lid on church's 'creepy' baptisms for the DEAD that sees children being put through 'traumatizing' ceremonies to 'save' those who have passed away,” DailyMail.com, March 17, 2024 from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13165429/mormon-church-bizarre-baptisms-cemetery-gravestone-pictures.html ↩

2. Heartbroken. Response to “Secret Societies and Temple crap,” Exmormon.org, August 31, 2021, https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2391636,2393708,quote=1 ↩

3. “Masonry”, Gospel Topics Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, accessed on April 23, 2024 from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/masonry?lang=eng ↩

4. Bradley, Don. “Joseph Smith’s First Vision as Endowment and Epitome of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (or Why I Came Back to the Church)”, FAIR Latter-day Saints, 2019, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2019/first-vision-as-endowment-and-epitome-of-the-gospel#:~:text=THE%20FIRST%20VISION%20WAS%20AN%20EPITOME%E2%80%94AND%20CONCRETE%20MANIFESTATION%E2%80%94OF,the%20Gospel%20of%20Jesus%20Christ. ↩

5. Bradley, Don. “The Lost 116 Pages”, Greg Kofford Books, November 21, 2019, ISBN-10: ‎158958760X or ISBN-13 :‎ 978-1589587601, pg 47-51 ↩

6. Bradley, Don. “The Lost 116 Pages”, Greg Kofford Books, November 21, 2019, ISBN-10: ‎158958760X or ISBN-13 :‎ 978-1589587601, pg 286-87 ↩

7. For a lengthier commentary go to Miller, Andrew. “King Benjamin’s Sermon as a Type of Temple Endowment.” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 61 (2024): 1-44, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/king-benjamins-sermon-as-a-type-of-temple-endowment/#footnote12sym ↩

8. “Letter to Presendia Huntington Buell,” 15 March 1839, p. 1, The Joseph Smith Papers, accessed July 19, 2024, https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-presendia-huntington-buell-15-march-1839/1#source-note ↩

9. Excerpt from Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (1979), 297-98, as found in the August 2015 Ensign, “He Taught Me the Heavenly Order of Eternity,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2015/08/he-taught-me-the-heavenly-order-of-eternity?lang=eng ↩

10. Bradshaw, Jeffrey M. "What Did Joseph Smith Know about Modern Temple Ordinances by 1836?" in “The Temple: Ancient and Restored,” 1-124. (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2016), https://interpreterfoundation.org/reprints/temple-ancient-and-restored/TMZ3-01- Bradshaw.pdf. ↩

11. Ricks, Stephen. “The Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 37 (2020): 319-330, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-sacred-embrace-and-the-sacred-handclasp-in-ancient-mediterranean-religions/ ↩

12. Bradshaw, Jeffrey. “KnoWhy OTL14A — What Similarities Are There Between Egyptian and Israelite Temples?” The Interpreter Foundation, April 17, 2018, https://interpreterfoundation.org/knowhy-otl14a-what-similarities-are-there-between-egyptian-and-israelite-temples/ ↩

13. Ricks, Stephen. “The Sacred Embrace and the Sacred Handclasp in Ancient Mediterranean Religions,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 37 (2020): 319-330, https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/the-sacred-embrace-and-the-sacred-handclasp-in-ancient-mediterranean-religions/ ↩

14. “Fu Xi.” Brittanica, Ancient Religions & Mythology. Accessed on July 19^th 2024 from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fu-Xi ↩

15. “Fuxi and Nüwa.” UNESCO. Accessed on July 19^th 2024 from https://en.unesco.org/silkroad/silk-road-themes/mouvable-heritage-and-museums/fuxi-and-nuwa ↩

16. “Fu Xi.” Brittanica, Ancient Religions & Mythology. Accessed on July 19^th 2024 from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fu-Xi ↩

17. “Fu Xi.” Brittanica, Ancient Religions & Mythology. Accessed on July 19^th 2024 from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fu-Xi ↩

18. Tvedtnes, John. “Early Christian and Jewish Rituals Related to Temple Practices.” FAIR Latter-day Saints, 1999, https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-1999/early-christian-and-jewish-rituals-related-to-temple-practices?source=5371 ↩

19. Nibley, Hugh. “The Message of the Joseph Smith Papryi”, Deseret Book Company (Salt Lake City, Utah), 1975, pg 515 ↩

20. “LDS Truth Claims 22: Temple Ordinances Part I,” YouTube, uploaded btey LDS Truth Claims, April 21, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGRwxUub4XI ↩

21. Haywood, Bryce. “U.K. Coronation Ceremony as an Endowment.” TempleStudy.com, April 10, 2008, https://www.templestudy.com/2008/04/10/coronation-ceremonyof-queen-elizabeth-ii/ ↩

22. Barker, Margaret. “The Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy” (London: Clark, 2003), 18, 43, and 294–95 ↩

23. Christensen, Kevin. "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011: Vol. 16 : No. 2 , Article 5, 2004, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol16/iss2/5 ↩

24. Barker, Margaret, “Temple Theology.” Accessed on May 23, 2024 from http://www.margaretbarker.com/Publications/Extracts/TempleTheologyIntro.htm ↩

25. Barker, Margaret, “What Did King Josiah Reform?”, BYU Scholars Archive, May 6, 2003, accessed on April 23, 2024 from https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?filename=18&article=1038&context=mi&type=additional ↩

26. Christensen, Kevin. "The Deuteronomist De-Christianizing of the Old Testament," Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 1989–2011: Vol. 16 : No. 2 , Article 5, 2004, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/msr/vol16/iss2/5 ↩

27. Day, Mike. “The Tree Restored in the Holy of Holies – Revelation 22”, Talking Scripture, accessed on April 23, 2024 from https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2019/10/the-tree-restored-in-the-holy-of-holies-revelation-22/ ↩

28. Day, Mike. “The Tree Restored in the Holy of Holies – Revelation 22”, Talking Scripture, accessed on April 23, 2024 from https://www.ldsscriptureteachings.org/2019/10/the-tree-restored-in-the-holy-of-holies-revelation-22/ ↩