The Tanners’ treatment of the relationship of Mormonism and Masonry (pages 484-92) is a similar use of historical parallels. The Tanners claim that Mormon temple ordinances are the Item Y that Joseph Smith copied from the Item X of Masonry: “We feel that there is only one logical explanation for the many parallels between the temple ceremony and Masonry, and that is that Joseph Smith borrowed from the Masons” (page 490). This is the “only” logical use of analogy if Joseph Smith’s claim of revelation has already been rejected. First, the Tanners ignore the fact that five years before Joseph Smith was introduced to Masonry, two essentials of the Mormon endowment were practiced at Kirtland: the ceremonial washing (not just of feet) “from head to foot in soap and watter . . . next in perfumed spirits,” and the anointing with consecrated oil.19

This and the more complete LDS temple ceremony of baptism, washing, anointing, endowment (including symbolic remembrances of Christ’s sacrament), and sealing in marriage, bear striking resemblances to the format of salvation ordinances described in the Gospel of Philip which was discovered at Nag Hammadi, Egypt in recent decades:“For this one is no longer a Christian but a Christ. The Lord did everything in a mystery, a baptism and a chrism [anointing with consecrated oil] and a Eucharist and a redemption and a bride-chamber.”

Joseph Smith’s initiation as a Master Mason in 1842 may indeed have acted as a catalyst for him to seek further revelation about the ceremonies that Masons claimed came from the Temple of Solomon, and (in view of what I will discuss later about scriptural phraseology) it is possible that Masonic phraseology influenced the development of the wording used to teach the sacred elements of the LDS endowment. Nevertheless, before repudiating Mormon temple ordinances by historical parallel, one should consider the ancient rites and ceremonies in Egyptian documents, Semitic manuscripts, and early Christian sources. This is a more appropriate test, since the LDS claim is that the temple ordinances existed prior to Masonry and prior to Solomon’s temple. The existence of parallels in ancient rites and LDS ordinances therefore is of at least equal importance as Masonic-LDS parallels.20

18 Wilford Woodruff Journal, 3-4 April 1837, quoted in Dean C. Jessee, “The Kirtland Diary of Wilford Woodruff,” Brigham Young University Studies, 12 (Summer 1972): 387-88.

19 R. McL. Wilson, trans., The Gospel of Philip (New York, 1962), p. 43 (115: 26-30). Oxford English Dictionary definition of “chrism”: “1. Oil mingled with balm consecrated for use as an unguent . . . 2. A sacramental anointing; unction.”

20 Hugh Nibley provides a useful summary in The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment (Salt Lake City, 1975).