Mormonism is SUPPOSED to be a restoration of the original w ay
God had his religion set up before the wicked Catholics (oops! I
forgot we don't accuse them, specifically, any more). . . er,
before it was changed by evil people.

So is there ANY indication that marriage among the ancient
Hebrews or early Christians was for eternity? Is there any
indication that marriages were performed in the Temple?

Jesus' first miracle is turning water into non-alcoholic grape
juice at the wedding in Cana. Not a wedding in a temple.

> So is there ANY indication that marriage among the
> ancient
> Hebrews or early Christians was for eternity? Is
> there any
> indication that marriages were performed in the
> Temple?

Not even in the BoM.

The ever evolving LDS church.

Again, I have to ask a 'nevermo question': The OP says, "Jesus turned the water into non-alcoholic grape juice"?? Where does that come from? LDS teaching, no doubt?

It's a common belief among the more TBM, who are aghast at the proposition that Jesus might have drunk something alcoholic, but the Q15 (the official arbiters of doctrine) have not endorsed that as far as I know.

Bruce R tried that once.

Bruce R. McConkie, "Doctrinal New Testament Commentary," Vol. 1, p. 136:
"John 2:3. Wine] 'Fruit of the vine' (Matt. 26:29), a light, sweet wine (normally unfermented); eaten with bread it was one of the staple foods of the day."

Unfermented = non-alcoholic = grape juice.

I used to know a Cinda a long time ago. Your maiden name doesn't happen to start with "W" does it?

The Old Testament is clear about what the Temple was used for. None of it was secret. There were no baptisms or marriages in the Temple. The priests washed themselves in a basin called the "brazen sea" as a matter of hygiene since they were going to eat the sacrifices. The brazen sea and altar for burnt offerings were outside the Temple though. It was nothing like LDS Temples. Solomon's Temple only had 2 rooms. A holy place and a holy of holies (ie holier place).

1 Kings chapters 5-9 describe the building of Solomon's Temple.

Trust me, Tolkien's version is much better.

I like how Joseph Smith supposedly "restored" the fullness of the gospel, but he forgot to restore a succession plan.

And he didn't leave a written script for the temple ordinances.

When the St. George temple was ready to be put into operation, they hastily convened a meeting of all the old farts who'd been through the previous temples to see if they could put together, among their respective memories, an endowment script.

This is when the stuck in the oath against the US government.

The mormon church has no more connection to a ghawd, any ghawd, than the Roller Derby or The Daughters of the Sacred Margarita.

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So is there ANY indication that marriage among the
> ancient
> Hebrews or early Christians was for eternity?

I have no idea about early Christian beliefs, but Jews have remarkably little interest in what happens after death. The emphasis in Jewish life is on each person living their own life to the very best of their abilities...which includes "tikkun olam" ("repairing the world"---making the earthly, three-dimensional world a better place) as well as "tzedakah" ("righteousness," which Christians usually "translate" as charity, but this is a misunderstanding of the meaning of the term..."tzedakah" takes as a given that all creatures deserve respect, and whenever a living creature, including human beings, is in less than [respectful] circumstances, a Jew has an obligation to do what they can to mitigate whatever is wrong). The emphasis in Judaism and in Jewish life is doing the best you can NOW, while you are alive...and letting "after death" take care of itself.

Therefore, and particularly in relation to marriage, there has never been a concept of "eternal marriage" in Judaism. Jews were historically polygamous (gradually changing over most of the world in the last thousand years or so to monogamous marriages)... some Jews in some places still are polygamous (though not many)...

...and divorce has always been immensely easy for MEN to obtain (men just have to literally hand their wife a document saying that they are divorcing their wife, and the divorce occurs at that moment). As I have written before, a wife CANNOT get a divorce on her own, she can only BE divorced (and this part of Jewish law has been, and is right now, tragic for many Jewish women---and many Jews ARE working to try to change this). [A Jewish woman in the United States can get a civil, legal divorce on her own, but without her husband giving her a religious divorce, she is still Jewishly-legally married---which means she cannot get remarried under Jewish law, and if a given woman is observant, and especially if she is a member of any ultra-Orthodox groups, this can be tragic for her and for her minor children.]

> Is there any indication that marriages were performed in the
> Temple?

No. The temple had two functions:

1) Killing animals which were brought to the temple for slaughter as gifts to God. (This was actually meant as a form of communication with God: the concept of individual prayers to God was in the midst of a prolonged evolution, from the beginnings of Jewish history, through the Roman rule period. By the "time of Jesus," the concept of INDIVIDUAL prayer---as versus the Jewish priesthood praying on behalf of the Jewish people---was sufficiently evolved so that small groups of Jews (congregations) could gather and say prayers on behalf of themselves. [It should also be kept in mind that the "kitchen gods" were a continuing part of Jewish life for a very long time. These were the Canaanite gods, or some of them anyway, whose representations (statues, etc.) were kept by the females of the household "in the kitchen," and the women---ostensibly without the knowledge of the males in the household---did pray individually for the concerns of daily life: food...money sufficient for their needs...healing from accidents and illnesses...protection from weather, or any kind of unfriendly forces (could be personal enemies of the families)...good marriages for their children...healthy and "easy" childbirth, followed by strong, healthy children. It is likely that the women's hidden, individual, prayer activities with the kitchen gods, over the course of those early centuries, influenced the development of the concept of individual prayer until congregations and synagogues began to take hold during Roman times (this was the general period of time when the temple was destroyed by the Romans---and when the temple WAS destroyed, the Jews of that time didn't miss a beat...they just gathered in neighborhood groups, etc. as early members of small congregations). As to the reasons for the temple itself, in addition to animal sacrifice...

2) Once a year, the high priest of the Jews went into the Holy of Holies and "communicated" with God on behalf of the Jewish people as a whole.

Jewish marriages back then ideally took place outdoors---and there is still a strong preference for outdoor weddings among Jews when these are feasible. The chuppah (the wedding canopy) that you see in Jewish weddings functions as a legal "room," and the bride and groom (no one else is underneath the chuppah) stand under this canopy as they are united as a couple. As synagogues (or their early precursors) began to be created, weddings also began to move inside, but ALWAYS with the chuppah erected for the bride and groom, so they were, legally, in "their own room" during the ceremony.

> Jesus' first miracle is turning water into
> non-alcoholic grape
> juice at the wedding in Cana.

Wine is very important in Judaism---beginning with: it MUST be kosher (which mostly means: has been Jewishly-legally certified that it has never been used in idol worship). When I buy kosher wine, I go to our local Super Sal (Super Sol, with a slightly different spelling, is a prominent supermarket chain in Israel) and get Israeli-made kosher wine, which comes in many different varieties.

I am the daughter of two alcoholics (both of whom had "end-stage alcoholism" written as either the primary, or the secondary, cause of their deaths on their death certificates), and I basically "don't drink" wine...except that I learned to drink the minimum required for Shabbat, and also for Passover (and I haven't made it to Purim yet, which is a once a year, joyous celebration of a "miracle" rescue of the Jewish people, and REQUIRES that every Jew, except for children, gets so drunk that they can't tell the difference between the name of the villain and the name of the hero of the story).

Real, genuine, kosher wine is an integral part of Jewish religious life, and grape juice could never make the Jewishly-legal cut.

My guess: if there was a single-figure Jesus, and he changed grape juice into wine, it was WINE. Weddings are celebrations, and Jewish celebrations involve WINE.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2016 12:29PM by Tevai.

"Jesus' first miracle is turning water into non-alcoholic grape
juice at the wedding in Cana."

You might be right about the "wine" not being alcoholic at the wedding in Cana. We dont have any clear indication but since it was fresh it probably hadnt fermented yet. The problem is that any grape juice is going to ferment over time. So the "wine" isnt going to stay non-alcoholic for very long. Mormons dont want to portray Jesus as drinking any alcohol at all because of their prohibition on alcohol. Think about it. If drinking alcohol is a sin then Jesus would then be a sinner for drinking alcohol. That would be a huge problem for them. The reality of the situation is that the wine of the New Testament did have alcohol as part of fermentation. The New Testament prohibits getting drunk on alcohol but never prohibits drinking alcohol all together like the Mormons do.

I put "non-alcoholic" just to be silly, since that's what a lot
of Mormons say to avoid dealing with Jesus actually drinking wine.

It wasn't freshly trampled grapes, it was water that was turned
into wine by magic. Therefore there would be no reason to
assume it was non-fermented.

It was not just wine - it was excellent wine!

What kind of idiot brings non-alcoholic wine to a wedding?

"What kind of idiot brings non-alcoholic wine to a wedding?"

Mormon idiots. Except they call it Sparkling Grape Juice.

My take on the wine being alcoholic or not is simple. The New Testament never explicitly talks about non-alcoholic wine. It does talk about people getting drunk on wine and how drunkenness is a sin. To be consistent, I would have to assume that the word "wine" means the same thing throughout the same documents. Since in some places it explicitly means alcoholic wine and the same word is used in other places then it must have been alcoholic wine too. Mormons just dont know what they are talking about and do mental gymnastics to try to justify their thinking.

 Luke 5:36-39, KJV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wine_into_Old_Wineskins

As wine ages, it ferments and expands and therefore needs to be stored in something that expands or has room for expansion, such as a new wineskin. If you have Mormon-type alcohol-free wine, then you won't need to worry about expansion, but you do have to have refrigeration or a bottling plant.

The fact that the folks in Jesus' time intended to store the drink and let it age, means they expected it to ferment and expand. Conversely, if they were just going to drink grape juice, they would have drunk it immediately because there was no way to preserve it without fermentation.

Or as has been pointed out, it could have been a freakin' miracle.

It also couldn't be transported more than 10 or 20 miles without fermenting. Unless Jesus strapped it to the back of his motorcycle.

From what little I know (and there is A LOT I don't know) women were not allowed in Jewish temples in ancient times. So how could they get married in them let alone do endowments, sealings, baptisms for the dead, etc? Weren't temples just for the men?

I think someone is pulling a fast one over at the COB.

Pooped Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> From what little I know (and there is A LOT I
> don't know) women were not allowed in Jewish
> temples in ancient times. So how could they get
> married in them let alone do endowments, sealings,
> baptisms for the dead, etc? Weren't temples just
> for the men?

I didn't know the answer to this...and after some research, I STILL don't know the answer to this...

...but in my defense, neither does anyone else either!!!

It turns out that, although this has been a fairly lively research subject, the archaeological and written evidence is scant, and using that evidence, the learned conclusions arrived at are often confusingly opposed.

Here are what seem to be the most logical answers (plural!!!) now...

Until the Middle Ages, there appears to be only very limited differences in access between the genders, both in the ancient Temple, and in local synagogues. (And, as it turns out, women visited the Temple often when it existed, according to the discussions in the Talmud.)

The main exception appears to be that [possibly!!!] on ONE annual festival (one of the "happy" festivals), and at some point, the ruling rabbis decreed that women attending services would be physically restricted to a balcony area in the Temple because of the potential for "frivolous" interaction between the genders. [Any time the word "frivolous" is used in Jewish legalistic matters, the word means: "sex."]

The other, "sort of" exception was that women could not become priests (even if they were born into the priestly line), and, therefore, in the Temple---which was composed of a series of "courts"---were not allowed to enter into the court or two which was closest to the Holy of Holies.

However, in the other ("further out") Temple courts, "mixed" (women and men) gatherings were the norm.

The outermost court, which functioned as the first part of the way to the innermost courts, was known as the "ezrat nashim" ("Women's Court"), but men and women freely mixed there...except for, very possibly, that one particular "happy" festival where the ruling rabbis were concerned about actual sexual improprieties which might occur.

Other than that, men and women evidently freely participated, together, side-by-side, in whatever was going on in the Temple at that time.

In the Middle Ages, which was many centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, prohibitions against women worshipping among men began the ["modern era," "Orthodox"] practices of the mehitzah: a barrier between the genders, which could mean any number of things: women restricted to a balcony area...or a nearly floor-to-ceiling "wall" between the genders (often made of wood, but could be glass, or possibly decorative metal)...or a waist-high "divider" between the genders...or an informally-acknowledged "barrier" or undrawn "line" dividing the worshipper's area that women didn't pass during services because they were told not to.

Jews don't do baptisms for the dead. Every person has to do their own mikvah ("ritual bath") dunking all by themselves (though there are often supervisoring people to make sure that every single molecule of skin, and every single hair, on any given person's body is thoroughly dunked---which means: no scabs from wounds or jewelery allowed; this is why the circumcisions and symbolic circumcisions in my conversion-to-Judaism class were done at the time they were done [there was a two-week acceptable framework, as I remember]---the circumcision scabs had to heal and come off naturally before those males could go through the mikvah).

A dead person, whether "in person" or in "spirit," "going through the mikvah" is a profoundly unsettling and shocking concept, from a Jewish point of view---and literally NO ONE converts to Judaism after they die!!! ;)

Here are two sources (and others can be Googled with something like: was there a mehitzah in the Second Temple?").

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/mehitzah-separate-seating-in-the-synagogue/

And a publication from The Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, April 2004, written by Rabbi Monique Susskind Goldberg and translated from the Hebrew by Rabbi Diana Villa: THE MEHITZAH IN THE SYNAGOGUE (www.schechter.edu/women/Lil1-e.pdf)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2016 08:39PM by Tevai.

Why were women prohibited from praying at the West Wall?

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why were women prohibited from praying at the West
> Wall?

An interesting question on several levels, EOD.

I don't have the time to answer this now because [as is often true] "the" answer is plural, but I will later today.

Have a great day today!!!

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Why were women prohibited from praying at the West
> Wall?

It's cooled off a bit here (those two degrees Fahrenheit less COUNT!!!), and I actually am thinking better.

My confusion is in your verb tense..."were," instead of "are."

Would you please clarify whether you are talking about....

1) when the Second Temple still existed?, or...

2) right now: 2016 C.E.

Totally different answers, depending on which one you mean.

Thank you!!!

:)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2016 03:40AM by Tevai.

I meant since the beginning of the end of the Diaspora, circa mid-1800s (I'm guessing). I understand that women as of earlier, women have access to a part of the West Wall...

But mostly I was asking because of the question regarding access by women to the temple when it was functioning. It seemed to me that if women were kept away from the West Wall NOW, by the orthodox, what role could have they have had 'back then'? Which you mostly answered yesterday, when you explained that it was way after the destruction of the temple that the division between men and women as worshipers came into existence.

Patriarchy...what a bummer.

Actually women are mentioned to be in the temple throughout both old and new testament. They couldn't be there at days of menstruation, and they could not enter the inner sanctuary, which most men couldn't either because only the priesthood from the tribe of Levi had access there.

I have a '55 Chrysler Imperial that would look *awesome* if it was restored in all things, including the engine, body and interior.

Where do I pray for that? Is there a Sacred Parts Yard or something?

I mean, this thing needs a LOT of work, so it might need, like, 500 revelations a minute.

Those are neat cars, I hope you get a chance to fix it up.

I dunno about a '55 Chrysler (way too modern for my taste), but anything from the late 1800s through about the mid-'20s or so, and I'm right there with you...

I LOVE antique automobiles!!!

:) :) :)

Good grief! I misread the thread title as:

Restoration of all tithings.




Nevermind.

Where nothing is lost, there's nothing to restore.