Temple worship has ancient roots, FAIR speaker says

SANDY — While temple worship is a prominent and unique characteristic of Mormonism, there are numerous similarities to it in ancient religious texts and traditions throughout the world, said the closing speaker at the two-day FAIR Mormon apologetics conference Friday.

Daniel C. Peterson, professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU, is an outspoken defender of Mormonism and a perennial speaker at the annual conference sponsored by the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, an independent group that seeks to refute challenges leveled at the doctrines, practices and leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Peterson's topic was "The Temple as a Place of Ascent to God." He said ascent is a motif that finds expression throughout the ancient world.

"You find it in the New Testament," he said. "For example, 2 Corinthians 12, where Paul tells in modest language what is probably his own experience." The passage speaks of a man "caught up into the third heaven" who "heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter."

A concept in Hebrew cosmology involving three heavens underlies Paul's experience, Peterson said. "It also, I think, is clearly related to some other things we know about: the idea of a celestial, terrestrial and telestial kingdom," he added, speaking of the Mormon concept of exaltation in the afterlife for those who are worthy of it.

"The idea of going up literally into the presence of God is common throughout the New Testament and the Bible itself," he said. "It's also common to the Book of Mormon." He cited the account in 3 Nephi 28:10, 12-17 of three Nephite disciples of Jesus who had an experience similar to the one described by Paul.

Peterson referred to Old Testament passages, Isaiah 2:1-4 and Micah 4:1-5, that speak of ascending to the "mountain of the Lord," what Mormons believe is an allusion to the temple and its ordinances.

"The 'mountain of the Lord's house' was sometimes really a mountain," he said. "If you didn't have a 'Lord's house,' you had a mountain." He said that in ancient times it was common for mountains to be associated with the presence of God and for artificial mountains to be built by people trying to attain that presence.

The tower of Babel, told of in Genesis 11, was a kind of satanic counterfeit of such an artificial mountain, he said. "It was a fake temple with fake temple rites."

Throughout his presentation, Peterson showed projected images of ascension motifs in disparate religious cultures.