But the Devil had influence among the Jews after all the great things they had witnessed to cause the death of Jesus Christ by hanging him between heaven and earth.
THE BOOK OF MORMON defends the literal return of Israel to its homeland in Palestine in preparation for the long-awaited millennium and alleged Hebraic hegemony. Nephi says, “The Father shall commence, in preparing the way for the fulfilling of his covenants, which he hath made to his people, which are of the House of Israel.”1 The prophecies of Isaiah have yet to be fulfilled. “And behold, according to the words of the prophet, the Messiah will set himself again the second time, to recover them” (p. 75). The “Gentiles” are the primary agents in the literal return of the Jews to their homeland, “carrying them forth to the lands of their inheritance” (p. 84; see also pp. 97, 98).
The return of Palestine to the Jews was defended by such celebrated early Mormons as Heber C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and Erastus Snow.2 Commenting on Isaiah 11:11, also quoted in the Book of Mormon, Smith writes:
The Time has at last arrived, when the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has set his hand again the second time to recover the remnants of his people … to bring in the fullness of the Gentiles, and establish that covenant with them, which was promised when their sins should be taken away…. This covenant has never been established with the house of Israel, nor with the house of Judah…. Christ, in the days of his flesh, proposed to make a covenant with them, but they rejected Him and His proposals, and in consequence thereof, they were broken off, and no covenant was made with them at that time. But their unbelief has not rendered the promise of God of none effect; no, for there was another day limited [sic] in David … when his people, Israel should be a willing people.3
This is not carte blanche, but it is pretty forgiving.
As noted, however, it is possible to be both pro-Hebrew and anti-Jewish. Here’s the rub. Lehi, for example, descends from Joseph, not Judah, as does Smith. Mormonism does not simply fall prey to the anti-Semitism inherent to Christianity. As Paul Tillich has said, one cannot be a Christian without being anti-Semitic. (One does not easily forgive fratricide, especially against one so beloved, so important, so unjustly condemned to torture and death.) Yet the Book of Mormon can be seen as a most virulent strain of Christian anti-Semitism. “Christ,” Nephi explains, using very strong language, “should come among the Jews, among they which are the more wicked part of the world; and they shall crucify him: For thus it behooveth our God; and there is none other nation on earth that would crucify their God.” Nephi goes on to explain, “Wherefore, because of their iniquities, destructions, famines, pestilences and bloodsheds, shall come upon them; and they which shall not be destroyed, shall be scattered among all nations.” Gentiles persecute Jews as part of the divine plan of redemption.4
Although Dispensationalists are notorious for their role in the distribution of anti-Semitic literature (lobbying and raising money to support the state of Israel all the while),5 theoretically at least they defer to Judaism once the millennium actually arrives. Darby was acutely aware of the Jewishness of Jesus and the covenant God made with Abraham. Jesus, he taught, would rule the earth during the millennium from his capital in Jerusalem. His top advisers would be Jewish, Gentiles occupying the lower echelon of the new world government. Darby’s millennium was a Semitic affair. As scholar Herman A. Hoyt explains, “the most reasonable explanation recognizes the existence of two kingdoms,”6 what Darby called the “universal kingdom of God” of Psalms 103:19 and the “mediatorial kingdom of Israel” of Daniel 2:44 (cited on pp. 73–74).
Plenty of early Mormon testimony speaks of two millennial capitals. Sidney Rigdon, an early adviser to Smith, believed that the “ancient saints will reign with Christ a thousand years; the gathered saints will dwell under that reign.”7 The phrase “ancient saints” is undoubtedly a reference to Israel, but the “gathered saints” quite probably refers to the children of Judah and other lesser “Hebrews.” Here, then, is the difference between the Mormon millennium and that of the Dispensationalists. The tenth article of faith in Mormonism (there are thirteen in all) states: “We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion will be built upon this [the American] continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.” Here the words “this continent” ring out loud and clear as a correction to the philo-Semitism inherent in Dispensationalism. Orson Pratt, in his famous 1849 millenarian treatise The New Jerusalem: or, the Fulfilment of Ancient Prophecy underscores the preeminence of Zion.8 As it says in Ether,
Behold, Ether saw the days of Christ, and he spake concerning the New Jerusalem upon this land; and he spake also concerning the house of Israel, and the Jerusalem from whence Lehi should come; and after that it should be destroyed it should be built up again a holy city unto the Lord; wherefore it could not be a New Jerusalem … wherefore the remnant of the house of Joseph shall be built upon this land; and it shall be a land of their inheritance; and they shall build up a holy city unto the Lord, like unto Jerusalem of old; and they shall no more be confounded, until the end come, when the earth shall pass away…. And then cometh the New Jerusalem…. And then also cometh the Jerusalem of old.9
That the children of Joseph are “no more being confounded” alludes, of course, to the confusion at the Tower of Babel. The New Jerusalem is not the wicked city Lehi and his family were forced to flee, inhabited by the children of Judah. In the Mormon millennial pecking order, the Jewish people get their old city back, but it falls under the watchful eye of a new religious capital far away on another continent, the domain of eleven of the original twelve tribes of Israel. Whether Jesus reigns in Jerusalem or simply rules over it from Zion is not clear—a moot point in some respects.
Stephen Epperson, in his book Mormons and Jews: Early Mormon Theologies of Israel, suggests that Mormonism was “an independent Christian theology of Israel which affirmed the autonomy, integrity, and continuity of covenant Israel.”10 Autonomy and integrity perhaps, but not quite an affirmation of the continuity of the Jews’ special status as God’s chosen people. This is because, according to British Israelites, Jews (not Hebrews per se) sold their birthright when they crucified Jesus. (The Romans, it seems, get relatively unbruised.) One may consider what Brigham Young said before a packed house of Saints on the matter of the salvation of the Jews:
Can you make a Christian of a Jew? I tell you, nay. If a Jew comes into this Church and honestly professes to be a Saint, a follower of Christ, and if the blood of Judah is in his veins, he will apostatize…. You may as well undertake to command the most degraded of these Indian tribes, and give them arms and accouterments, and try to put them through the regular military exercise, as to preach to the Jews to make them believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Jerusalem is not to be redeemed by the soft still voice of the preacher of the Gospel of peace. Why? Because they were once the blessed of the Lord, the chosen of the Lord, the promised seed. They were the people from whom should spring the Messiah; and salvation could be found only through that tribe. The Messiah came through them, and they killed him…. You may hand out to them gold, you may feed and clothe them, but it is impossible to convert the Jews, until the Lord God Almighty does it…. Then I say to the Elders in those regions … LEAVE THEM, AND COME HOME, THE LORD DOES NOT REQUIRE YOU TO STAY THERE, FOR THEY MUST SUFFER AND BE DAMNED.11
In the mid-1870s Orson Pratt defended the church’s policy of some forty-two years of not proselyting Jews.12
Mormonism’s relationship to Judaism can be seen as a love-hate affair. This is because it distinguishes between the House of Judah and the House of Israel. Jews might be Israelites, but Israelites are not Jewish. And so it loves Israel and hates Judah. Such a fine point is the sine qua non of British Israelism, too, as I have said—a racist ideology that is not only deeply anti-Semitic but cousin of the lost ten tribes theory (the belief that the ten northern tribes the Assyrians carried away into captivity were the forefathers of British Europeans and Native Americans). Not too surprisingly, card-carrying British Israelites were among Mormonism’s first converts in England. Both claim literal descent from ancient Israel, from the lost ten tribes in particular.13 Both also believe that through them Judah will be redeemed.14 (That many on the political fringe in American society, famous for their virulent anti-Semitism, espouse British Israelite beliefs merely drives home the point.)15 The notion that the covenant passed from Judah to Israel is at the heart of this anti-Semitic polemic. (It is important to remember, however, that Mormons have never been party—their British Israelite beliefs notwithstanding—to any form of militant anti-Semitism or vigilante persecution of people of Jewish descent.)
FIGURE 41 Masonic Model of the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem
Robert I. Clegg, Mackey’s Revised Encyclopedia of Freemasonry (Richmond, Va.: Macoy Publishing and Masonic Supply, 1966), 1:102a.
The restoration of Israel in Mormon thought concerns the redemption of an idea more so than of a people, a deep reverence for the immutability of God’s Word rather than a sincere interest in the fate of “the most wicked in all the world.” An attachment to the Holy Land and its place in history eclipsed any genuine interest in the ultimate fate of these covenant people. Even Judaism’s most daring Mormon acolyte, the eminent missionary to the Holy Land Orson Hyde, dedicated the Holy Land, not its Jewish inhabitants, to the preaching of the gospel.16 We perhaps should not be overly surprised to find that the book’s olive branch to the Indians (the Lamanites), if seen in the same Masonic/British-Israelite light, also proves less than forgiving.
One prominent Mormon scholar has argued that “nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints (as they came to be called) embarked on a path that led to developments that now distinguish their tradition from the Christian tradition as surely as early Christianity was distinguished from its Hebraic context.”17 A slight correction seems in order: rather than a linear, teleological movement out of and then away from orthodox Christianity, early Mormonism can be seen in some respects as a neo-Hebraic countermovement, not unlike Rabbinic Judaism, since it, too, defined itself in opposition to Primitive Christianity, coming into being for that expressed and exclusive purpose.18 At the same time, Mormonism went well beyond mere Judaic apocalyptic retrenchment or millenarian literalism, constituting a modern-day liberation of America the New Jerusalem by an encampment of Christian Masons/Templar Knights. Judaism could have Jerusalem. America was Zion.