Mormons and Atlantis

[Utgardloki]

Note, this is for a fantasy setting called Earth, and deviates in many important respects from the metaphysics that actually apply to the real world:

I don't want to get into a debate over whether the Church of Latter Day Saints is correct or off the wall. It's just that in my development of my Atlantis ideas, I've been wanting to take into account the major religions, and know very little about Mormonism. In developing a supernatural campaign set on Earth, I find it impossible to proceed without considering where the "Big G" fits in.

If there is interest, I might post some of my thoughts about creating an "Earth Mythos". What I have is something where every religion is wrong, but has some bits of the truth. Jesus is the Incarnation of a Primal god once known as Aten, who also spoke to Muhammad. He's also been known as Jehovah and Marduk. But he is not every god; there is his brother, Jupiter, who is currently living in England, and a number of others.

So the question becomes, if there is truth to the Book of Mormon, what effect might that have on this setting? One thought is that the Mormons are sure that the Garden of Eden is in Missouri, while I am committed to setting that in Asia Minor. Perhaps there could be multiple Gardens of Eden, which could be confusing, but it could work.

It looks like the Mormons are more concerned about what is happening now, than they are about what happened thousands of years ago, so they should fit in a lot easier than some religions. I've really had to change things from the Christian Fundamentalist perspective to make everything work, especially with that Theory of Evolution thing, which I am also committed to.

I've read the Book of Mormon, and it seems that book mainly is a history of people living in America. I've been wondering if I could get away with putting them backwards in time several thousand years so they could be atlanteans.

(For the Atlanteans, I have them starting out by worshipping an ocean goddess, but over time, her consort becomes more and more important, until eventually they are worshipping an ocean god, who can be equated with Poseidon. Minority religions are sure to exist.)

 

[Cleombrotus]

So the question becomes, if there is truth to the Book of Mormon, what effect might that have on this setting?

It means that if you don't like the Osmonds, you're f****d...

 

[Utgardloki]

Who doesn't like the Osmunds?

 

[havercake lad]

I was far more interested in Joyce Mckinney at the time ! :wink:

 

[Utgardloki]

Hmmm, Joyce McKinney does not have an entry on MormonWiki. Donny Osmond does.

I think I can solve the Eden problem by having Eden an alternate plane of existence (a demi-plane) with access points at various places, including Missouri and Turkey. That way, where Eden is depends on where you are. Travellers to Eden should be aware, however, that this garden is only for the pure of heart.

I may be able to equate Eden with Elysium, or have those two realms share a planet.

 

[soltakss]

Aargh! I've just lost a long post to the Internet Demons. Let's try again, this time pasting into a text editor first.

First of all, I have a vested interest being a Mormon convert. So apologies if I get touchy or make too many religious points. I'll try to keep religion out of this as much as I can.

The Book of Mormon talks about several migrations from the Old World to the New World. These migrations formed the basis of kingdoms in the New World. The last such migration was of Egyptian Jews who created several kingdoms. Two sons of a prophet, Nephi and Laman, split over religious ideas and formed the Nephites, who believed in the Jewish God and faith, and the Lamanites who turned their back on that faith. As Mormons believe in continuous revelation by prophets, the Book of Mormon has many stories about prophets who are not listened to by their people and many cases of people falling away from their beliefs. Jesus Christ is said to have preached to the Nephites following his resurrection, with many becoming converts and many not doing so. Many Nephites and Lamanites intermarried with other New World peoples. Eventually, the Nephites were defeated and assimilated into the Lamanites around 400AD.

So, from an Atlantis point of view, the Book of Mormon isn't particularly compatible. The Book of Mormon says that people migrated from the Old World to the New World, rather than migrating from Atlantis to the New World. However, the origin of the other New World peoples may have been Atlantis. In fact, the Mormon placing of the Garden of Eden in the New World could mean that Adam's descendants could have settled Atlantis before the Flood, so Noah would have tracelled from the New World to the Old World in the same Flood that destroyed the Atlantis the first time. Assuming that not everyone died in the Flood, the Atlantean survivors could then have settled in the New World and and Old World about the same time as Noah's did. All this assumes, of course, that your World Mythos includes the Flood as a concrete event.

The placing of the Garden of Eden in the New World doesn't really cause a problem if you take it as something that happened in the past. If you want to travel to Eden locations that have magical power/game importance then its location becomes important. Perhaps the Garden of Eden was transported to another plane/realm when Adam and Eve were thrown out. So, the Angel with the burning sword would then guard the gate to Eden rather than guarding a border. If you find the gate then you could rediscover the garden of Eden.

As to the World Mythos idea, Mormonism isn't any more or less compatible than other Christian sects. Mormons believe in God, The Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, but they believe that these are distinct beings rather than one being. They believe in continuing revelation and that there were prohets in the past and there are prophets now. One of the ideas of Mormonism is that the ancient prophets saw Biblical events and latter-day events and their words foreshadowed those events. If you expand this idea, then people of other religions would have foreseen those events and reflected them in their beliefs/scriptures. That's an idea that would fit in with the World Mythos, especially if you have prophets foretelling of the birth of Mohammed or other religious leaders.

So, there is no more difficulty including Mormonism than including Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians or any other Chrsitian sect.

Have you any particular questions/issues/problems with including Mormonism in the World Mythos?

 

[Utgardloki]

I guess the biggest question, for me, is how to fit the supposed Jewish migration to the New World with what we know about archeology, linguistics and culture. Any Jewish imprint on American culture would seem to have to have been very slight, wheras if this is part of a "Hyperborean War" that took place before 20,000 BCE, this becomes a lot easier, although there still is the problem of "covering up the evidence."

The other question is relating Mormon mythos to other mythos's. Looking at the Mormon Wiki, it looks like this won't be too much of a problem, compared to assimilating Christianity and Islam and Judaism. The Mormon ideas that Adam is the Angel Micheal and Noah is the Angel Gabriel are quite interesting, and suggest that other angels are other mortals who have died or have yet to be born.

As for the Flood, I have a number of floods, none of them covering the entire Earth. The one I call "Noah's Flood" I've associated with the geological theory that the Black Sea was flooded with salt water in about 5500 BCE. This requires stretching the geneologies in Genesis.

Perhaps Adam and Eve, after living in the New World for a thousand years, were later reincarnated in Asia Minor, where they started another family. This adds a complication of placing events across two separate continents. But this could have been prompted by the incarnation of Jupiter as the hero Odin, and so somebody had to be sent to Eurasia to represent Adam's god.

 

[soltakss]

Genesis genealogies should be taken with a pinch of salt, in my opinion.

Personally, I've never really believed that the Flood killed all mankind or that all the creatures of the world went into an ark. Having the Flood as a folk memory preserved by the descendants of the survivors makes more sense to me.

If you treat all the religious scriptures as background/fiction rather than fact then it makes things a lot, lot easier to use them in fantasy roleplaying settings.

 

[Sinisalo]

When i saw this thread I thought Simon was going to let rip. Shame on you for being so reasonable

 

[Utgardloki]

So, if somebody went back to between 400 BCE and 400 CE in a time machine and ended up in America, would one expect to see anything different based on the Mormon beliefs, compared to traditional non-Mormon thinking?

 

[Utgardloki]

When i saw this thread I thought Simon was going to let rip. Shame on you for being so reasonable

Nah, I'm a reasonable guy.

If Allah says he doesn't have any daughters, then those three chicks, Allāt, al-'Uzzā and Manāt, must be daughters of somebody else.

Things may get a little messy, dividing religious properties among three continents, but I'm sure things can be worked out.

 

[soltakss]

When i saw this thread I thought Simon was going to let rip. Shame on you for being so reasonable

There's not much point in staring a religious debate/flamestorm, Osmond barbs aside.

I've no problem in using any religious texts as gaming background - I've used Christianity and Islam in Alternate Earth settings so why not use the people from the Book of Mormon? As long as people are respectful of beliefs it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[soltakss]

So, if somebody went back to between 400 BCE and 400 CE in a time machine and ended up in America, would one expect to see anything different based on the Mormon beliefs, compared to traditional non-Mormon thinking?

It depends on where you go. Don't forget that in the Book of Mormon there is a split between the Nephites and Lamanites.

Nephites would be insular, keeping themselves to themselves and keeping away from the Gentiles.

Lamanites would be more akin to standard new World peoples with their own gods and not having an Old World heritage.

The two groups of people would have been at war before 30AD, but after 30AD they are at peace for about 200 years as many converted to Christianity. So, between 30AD and 200AD, approx, you would have a form of Christianity based around the teachings of Christ in the New World and based on the words of the prophets. So, they wouldn't have had the New Testament and would have their own traditions and beliefs which would be different from those of Old World Christians of the same time.

After about 200AD, the Nephites are attacked again and again by the Lamanites and are driven away from their religion until they finally die out around 400AD.

Culturally, the Nephites and Lamanites would have originally been similar to Egyptian Jews, but would have quickly assimilated many of the surrounding people. I would expect that their material culture would be virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding people. Of course, that would explain the lack of archaelogical evidence, but I would say that, wouldn't I?

It might make an interesting session if you had a roleplaying campaign set in the New World at that time and the players were expecting Mayan/Olmec cultures and they were suddenly presented with someone talking about Christ or revealing revelation as a prophet. Or maybe not.

 

[Utgardloki]

So, if somebody went back to between 400 BCE and 400 CE in a time machine and ended up in America, would one expect to see anything different based on the Mormon beliefs, compared to traditional non-Mormon thinking?

It depends on where you go. Don't forget that in the Book of Mormon there is a split between the Nephites and Lamanites.

Nephites would be insular, keeping themselves to themselves and keeping away from the Gentiles.

So where would be the best place to put the Nephites?

Lamanites would be more akin to standard new World peoples with their own gods and not having an Old World heritage.

The two groups of people would have been at war before 30AD, but after 30AD they are at peace for about 200 years as many converted to Christianity. So, between 30AD and 200AD, approx, you would have a form of Christianity based around the teachings of Christ in the New World and based on the words of the prophets. So, they wouldn't have had the New Testament and would have their own traditions and beliefs which would be different from those of Old World Christians of the same time.

After about 200AD, the Nephites are attacked again and again by the Lamanites and are driven away from their religion until they finally die out around 400AD.

I might be able to get a few political details from the Book of Mormon then, although I might have to change a few dates.

Culturally, the Nephites and Lamanites would have originally been similar to Egyptian Jews, but would have quickly assimilated many of the surrounding people. I would expect that their material culture would be virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding people. Of course, that would explain the lack of archaelogical evidence, but I would say that, wouldn't I?

It might make an interesting session if you had a roleplaying campaign set in the New World at that time and the players were expecting Mayan/Olmec cultures and they were suddenly presented with someone talking about Christ or revealing revelation as a prophet. Or maybe not.

Ah, but would they call him "Christ"? That's a Greek name given to a person living in Galilee. As far as I know, nobody ever called Jesus "Christ" to his face.

I have been wondering about equating "Christ" with "Krishna". Etymologically, they are related.

 

[kintire]

I have been wondering about equating "Christ" with "Krishna". Etymologically, they are related.

Krishna is from the Sanskrit for dark or black, and Christ is from the greek for anointed, and is a translation of the Hebrew term (anglicised as) Messiah. AFAIK the similarity in sounds is coincidence.

 

[soltakss]

So where would be the best place to put the Nephites?

Have a look at this site - http://christianlds.wordpress.com/2007/09/13/book-of-mormon-geography/ - it looks reasonable, I'm not sure if it agrees with the Book of Mormon but it would do as a campaign setting.

I might be able to get a few political details from the Book of Mormon then, although I might have to change a few dates.

It might be easier to get some chronologies from Wikipedia or other web sources.

Ah, but would they call him "Christ"? That's a Greek name given to a person living in Galilee. As far as I know, nobody ever called Jesus "Christ" to his face.

No, he is called Jesus in the Book of Mormon, but he is the same chap who was crucified in Jerusalem, preaching to the lost tribes of Israel.