[Soundtrack: Hector Berlioz' Requiem is playing as I type this up.]

Brief Critique of Correlated Lesson:

The stated purpose of this lesson is "To help class members understand that choices to follow Jesus Christ lead to liberty, happiness, and eternal life, while choices to follow Satan lead to misery and captivity." Here in NOM Sunday School, we will have a different purpose. To help NOMs understand how correlation tightly constructs religion into an all or nothing, black or white dichotomy. To this end, we will look at how Joseph Smith rewrote a section of the Bible to match his theology and doctrine of Salvation. We will also see if we can't salvage something meaningful from the stories of Cain and Abel, and of Enoch "who walked with God."

The lesson asks that the class set up a dichotomy comparing Cain with Enoch, especially their attitudes about God and obedience. In a nutshell, class members are told that Cain was a servant of Satan and Enoch was a servant of God, and then asks the class, "How does disobedience decrease freedom? How does obedience increase freedom?" By setting up this Cain/Enoch dichotomy and then asking those questions, the lesson sets up class members to "understand" that obedience to the tight script of Mormonism is actually freedom. It reproduces a Mormon world view that sees people who live different lives and who enjoy life's pleasures as being "enslaved." It may also have the effect of convincing class members that their own lived experiences are not valid, because "wickedness never was happiness."

Enoch is set up as a "man of God," because he obeys even when he doesn't feel capable. The class is asked why they should serve the Lord, even when they can't. They are further asked to identify what made Enoch a "man of God" and are asked to identify how they can know the "living prophet" is also a man of God.

Finally, the lesson uses Satan as a kind of bogeyman--if you choose to make your own independent decision, as Cain did, you are in fact, Master Mahan, a son of perdition. Moses 6:56 gives the nod to freedom--"the are agents unto themselves"--but then Smith set up this agency to mean a stark and obvious choice between Satan and God. So there is no real freedom of consciousness or of learning by experience, there is only choosing God or choosing Satan. If the Mormons have God, and you don't choose Mormonism, you've used your "freedom" to choose Satan. This is a classic example of internalizing the mechanisms of social control, by asking believers to doubt or question their obedience and to fear the consequences of disobedience.

Cain:

History: Mythographers believe that the story of Cain and Abel is a Hebrew version of the Sumerian myth of Dumuzi and Enkimdu, who were vying for the favor of the goddess Innana. Most of the myths of the Tanakh (the Hebrew bible) are descended from the mesopotamian myths and are linked culturally as semitic in origin; the myths were later combined and re-imagined during and directly following Babylonian captivity to match the needs of the Hebrew priests. (This particular story of Cain and Able was written by the Yahwist group of priests.) Briefly, Dumuzi was the god of shepherds and Enkimdu was a farmer. In the Summerian story, Dumuzi is aggressive and overbearing and Enkimdu is favored by the Goddess. Historically, this story is a mythologized image of the conflict between the older nomadic herding way of life and the newly developing urbanization and dependence on agriculture. The Hebrews reverse the story for cultural reasons: they still identified themselves as herders and the Yahwist priests needed to legitimate their form of worship, namely blood sacrifice

Traditional Interpretations:

Jewish: Right Worship (blood sacrifice or korbanot)

Christian: Abel had faith in God, so his sacrifice was accepted; Abel's blood demanded vengeance, whereas Jesus's blood demanded mercy.

Islamic: Abel overcame Cain, but refused to hurt him, so in liberal Islam, Abel is the original pacifist and a true martyr; in the Qu'ranic tradition, God taught Cain to bury his dead and taught him that it is wrong to kill another human being. Cain is not cursed in the Islamic tradition.

TBM Mormon Interpretations: Joseph Smith greatly expands and rewrites the myth of Cain and Abel. Smith's version, Cain is not a wrong worshipper, a man lacking in faith, or someone who hadn't yet learned that murder is wrong. For Smith, Cain is a full on Son of Perdition, the originator of secret combinations and organized crime, Master Mahan.

Interestingly, there was also the idea that Cain was not allowed to die, which became part of the Mormon mythos in the mid-19th Century. SWK's Miracle of Forgiveness tells the story of David W. Patten who claimed to have encountered Cain in Tennessee (LOL) in the late 1800s, and that Cain told him that his (Cain's) mission was to destroy the souls of men.

Why did Joseph Smith make these huge modifications to the Cain story? Why was it so important to Joseph Smith that Cain be a Son of Perdition? What social function does this story serve in Mormonism? What do Mormons learn about life and the world by believing this version of the Cain myth?

Enoch:

History: Mythographers trace the origins of the Enoch story to the Sumerian myth of Emmenduranki, who was the guardian of the Priesthood of Utu (the sun god) and who lived to be 365 years old, corresponding to the solar year of 365 days. Because the Tanakh is so vague about Enoch, other than saying he walked with God, Enoch became the central figure in esoteric Judaism, that is, the mystical Jewish tradition, in which he eventually became identified as the Metatron, the angel who communicates the Word of God directly to humanity.

Midrashic Tradition: The midrash is a large collection of interpretations of Torah, where rabbis have been thinking about every possible meaning of the founding myths of Judaism. In the midrashic tradition, Enoch was seen as living in a demon-infested world; because Enoch was a pious ascetic, God saved him from destruction at the hands of the demons.

Free-Masonry & NOM Historical Issue: I found the masonic tradition of Enoch to be fascinating, and wonder if Joseph Smith had access to the masonic traditions, because his own story parallels the masonic Enoch story. Enoch guards the secret knowledge given to Adam by God in the Garden of Eden; Enoch found God's word written on a Gold Book hidden in a hill; there was also a Ball upon which was a map of the world and a urim and thummim. I know that historically, the anti-masonic campaigns were under full swing by the 1810s, so it is possible that JS had heard or read all this information before writing the BOM and generating the mythos of his own prophethood.

TBM Mormon Interpretation: The crux of Joseph Smith's story is Zion, the establishment of a different kind of community, one in which everyone was of "one heart and one mind." The Lesson asks the class to talk about what that might mean, by asking them to consider whether or not they are of "one heart and mind" with the brethren.

Why do mormons focus on the obedience of Enoch? What would "righteousness" mean? Is there room at all for freedom of thought, conscience, expression in the Mormon version of the myth? Why are Mormons so attracted to this idea of being of ?one heart and one mind'? What effect does believing in this version of the Enoch myth have on the Mormon psyche and community?

Rethinking Cain and Enoch for NOMs:

[Soundtrack Change: Yo-Yo Ma playing the Bach Cello Suites]

As a child, I always felt bad for Cain (as well as for Laman and Lemuel). I didn't understand how come God wouldn't accept Cain's offering. He was a farmer; he offered what he had. What kind of capricious God would be so cruel to his/her children? The story of Cain and Abel never made sense to me. To me, he was rejected by his God and his family, and in his anger, killed his brother. Here are a couple other ways to think of the Cain myth:

Cain and Abel as a Twin Myth: The trope of twins who struggle for dominance is nearly universal in world mythologies. Literally, nearly every culture has one. So what if Cain and Abel functioned as a Twin myth? Cain representing the new, sedentary, urban, civilized life; Abel the old ways, the nomadic. Or on another vein, perhaps they can be viewed as parts of the interior, soul (Abel) v. body (Cain). Old v. new, civilization v. wildness, soul v. body.

A Midrashic View of Cain: In Jewish tradition, there is a notion of arguing with God and talking back to God when things go wrong. (This is the whole point of the Job story.) One of the midrashic views on Cain is that instead of saying "Am I my brother's keeper?" the Hebrew could also be read to say "Is not God my brother's keeper?" His fighting with God after his brother's death becomes Cain holding God responsible for evil in the world. Cain is seen as having committed a crime of passion and upon realizing what he's done, demands of God, "How could you let this happen?" Cain in this view is a stand in for all of humanity, as we ask the unanswerable question, why is there evil in the world? Why does God allow us to suffer so?

One possible NOM Reading of Enoch: I have often mentioned Eugene England's essay about Mormon theology, wherein he defends the weak and imperfect and progressing God of mormonism. This gives an earthy and embodied feeling to God, and for some reason, I find it much more moving and powerful than other versions of God's ineffability. Here, God is human, or maybe more accurately, humanness. This is, for England, the Mormon theodicy (i.e., If god is all-powerful, how could their be evil in the world?). England contrasts "absolutist" and "evangelical" Mormonism with the Mormonism of the Weeping God. This was a battle that originated historically between Brigham Young (who believed in a finite, fallible God) and Orson Pratt (who tried to steer Mormonism toward the traditional, absolute, ineffable God). For England, believing in the Weeping God forces us to be present in the world, here and now, instead of looking to some non-existent future where God will magically save us; it forces us to expand our view of compassion to the people we live with, here and now, in the world as it is; and it asks us to act, here and now, rather than throw up our hands and, as the Christians say, "let go and let God."

"These, then are reasons the weeping God of Mormonism must survive the assaults of the neo-orthodox, Evangelical Mormonism that is becoming almost official because of the influence of the Church Education System: to keep alive a concept of atonement which emphasizes Christ's mercy and our own responses to it to become new creatures; to keep before us the concept that moved Enoch to ?compassion as wide as eternity' and [which] might also move us; and to stem our inclinations to various forms of violence with each other. ... My belief in a weeping God who can't solve our pain and problems or promise to make everything right in the end, who calls us to live in a tragic universe, makes life at times very difficult. ... It is tragedy to believe in such a God; it would be tragedy to loose such an understanding of him."

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