I thought I remembered seeing a post awhile back about another sect that no longer exists that also did baptisms for the dead... Anybody got it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2013 10:56PM by dogeatdog.

1 Corinthians 15:29 Paul is writing to the Corinthians about the resurrected Christ and using the fact that they do baptism for the dead as a reason that they should believe in the resurrection.

Thanks, but I'm thinking more along the lines of being like the Cochranites - how the early Mormons borrowed 'celestial marriage'/spiritual wifery (polygamy) from them.

dogeatdog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I thought I remembered seeing a post awhile back
> about another sect that no longer exists that also
> did baptisms for the dead... Anybody got it?

The 'Mystic Order of the Solitary' that lived at Ephrata, Pennsylvania. They operated there in the 1700s into the early 1800s. They practiced baptism for the dead and claimed to have people who held the Melchizedek Priesthood. The Whitmer family lived within a couple miles before they moved north and met up with the young Joseph Smith.

Because I hate leaving things just baldly asserted, here's some documentation):

"There is another circumstance that belongs here, though it happened in the year 1738. About that time the custom came into vogue to have one's self baptized for the dead, as it was supposed from the words of Paul that the first Christians did the same. ... This custom was practiced for many years in the households, and has not yet wholly died out..." (Lamech and Agrippa, "Chronicon Ephratense" [S. H. Zahm, 1889], 122)

"This doctrine would be a comfort for those who so regularly lost family members in an increasingly sentimental nineteenth century. But baptism for the dead had a radical heritage. The German pietist mystics at Ephrata had, at the height of the Zionitic Brotherhood in the early 1740s, introduced baptism of the dead." (John L. Brooke, "The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844" [Cambridge University Press, 1994], 243)

(I remember D. Michael Quinn mentioning this also in his "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View", but I don't have a reference on hand.)

"One of Ephrata's innovations was baptism on behalf of the dead, a practice virtually unique to them and the Mormons in the history of Christianity. ... The chronicle reported that some householders still submitted to the practice as late as 1786. Ephrata may have been the source for Mormon baptism for the dead. The Whitmer family from the Ephrata area settled near Joseph Smith's boyhood home and some joined the movement." (Jeff Bach, "Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata" [Penn State University Press, 2003], 76)

Should also note that some adherents of the sect claimed to have had heavenly visions that featured the Father and the Son standing side by side, as well as the trio of Peter, James, and John making appearances (see the November 12, 1762 vision recounted in "Chronicon Ephratense", 271-275).

Thanks! That's what I was looking for!

I don't think a single fucking thought J.S. had was an original idea. Not even the pre-existence was his. It was a common belief among some Christians that there was a pre-mortal existence.

I honestly don't think it's a big deal to borrow ideas from others and turn them into your own, when you are writing fiction. Some of the greatest works of our time borrow very heavily from other stories (Star Wars for example - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sources_and_analogues)

The trouble here is that Smith (or whoever) was writing fiction. Not particularly good fiction either.

+