Is there a hidden temple theology in the Book of Mormon temple theology waiting beneath the 1830 text? That question, sparked by my friend Boyd in an online forum, turned into a three-part answer, and this is the final installment. While preparing, an AI tool handed me a word I had to look up: palimpsest, a manuscript scraped clean and written over, where the earlier text still shows through faintly. It turned out to be the perfect frame for the debate.
Temple Theology in the Book of Mormon
On one side are Val Larsen, Dave Butler (who writes on the temple as D. John Butler) and Don Bradley. Dave believes temple language appears in the very first verse, where Nephi says he was taught “the mysteries of God,” a phrase that in the ancient world pointed to initiatory rites. He reads the prison story in Helaman 5 as a four-stage temple drama: an outer court, a circle of fire like sacred robes, a guide named Aminadab, and a voice through the veil. Building on Jack Welch, he sees the Sermon on the Mount the same way. Val connects Lehi’s tree of life to the Divine Mother and argues that the veil once worn by women in the prayer circle placed them in her position. Don points to the brother of Jared speaking through a veil, and to an 1830 interview in which Joseph Smith Sr. reportedly said the plates bore Masonic symbols, years before Joseph joined the Masons in Nauvoo.
On the other side is historian Jonathan Stapley, author of Holiness to the Lord. Jonathan cautions against what he calls the teleological fallacy: reading highly developed 20th-century temple ideas back into an 1830 book. In his developmental view, the Nauvoo endowment grew out of Joseph’s 1842 Masonic initiation and the urgent need to bind families together before his death.
The forum did not let me off easy. Paul argued that the either/or framing is itself the mistake, though he leaned toward Stapley. A former Latter-day Saint explained that the Book of Mormon’s view of God, more Trinitarian than Utah theology, was part of his move to the Community of Christ. Val suggested the real divide is between a dispensational view, where the gospel is revealed, lost and restored, and an evolutionary one. New Testament scholar Chris Thomas even shared an actual palimpsest, the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, and observed that readers who already know the modern temple tend to be the ones who find it in the text. Paul also shared the story of how his wife’s conch-shell sketch shaped the Community of Christ temple in Independence.
Is the temple a restored ancient blueprint or a revelation that grew line upon line? Watch the full forum and decide which layer you see.
Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
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