The Garment of Joseph
Religious Brotherhoods
[Four Different Cultures]
[Utopian Societies]
59 Alma 46:20 We were talking about the battles and the scrolls. We are told in [Alma 46:20] that [Moroni] waves his banner and summons the people to maintain this title upon the land, entering into a covenant with the Lord. In the 1QM, the Battle Scroll, in column three, line four [we read]: “to maintain their title upon the land.” They make a covenant, and they not only come under the banner but they also sign their names. They all sign their names. When it says they entered into a covenant with the Lord, they did that in Qumran the same way. This was the ancient Jewish practice. Remember, we were talking about the practices that were carried out in the early days before the temple fell. When the temple fell in the days of Lehi, that ended everything. The rabbis didn’t like the temple; they didn’t want it to come back. The first thing they did, the learned men went and asked the emperor after Vespasian for permission to found a school at Jamnia across the Jordan. He gave them permission and that was the first rabbinical school. The rabbis aren’t priests. They teach the rabbinical learning which is another thing. They don’t have the rites of the temple anymore. But these people were the covenant people, and they signed up back in those days
59 Alma 46:21 The people run to the banner in their armor in verse 21, and they do that in column four, line six the same way. When they rush to sign up, naturally they put on their armor. They have to be armed. “... rending their garments in token, or as a covenant.” That’s a very important thing, that rending their garments. This custom of rending the garments and the story of the two garments we’ll come to presently. It isn’t found in the Old Testament. In verse 21 they tear their garments. There was recently an article by Jonathan Z. Smith called “The Garments of Shame” in which he discusses this old Jewish custom of coming and rending your garments, putting them in a pile, and stamping on them. You say, “May we be trampled on if we break our covenants.” That’s exactly what they do here. Verse 21: “... rending their garments in token, or as a covenant, that they would not forsake the Lord their God; or, in other words, if they should transgress [this is what you call a mystery, when you dramatize a thing and carry it out this way] the commandments of God, or fall into transgression, and be ashamed to take upon them the name of Christ, the Lord should rend them even as they had rent their garments.”
59,60 Alma 46:23 So the garments of shame are both torn and stamped on, the two things they do here. The rending of the garments takes us back to the garment of Joseph, when he was outcast and despised of his brethren. Moroni tells us this story. He recalls an old tale that was known to the Jews; they knew all about it. He says, “Let us remember the words of Jacob before his death.” You won’t find those words in the Bible. Where does he tell these stories? Well, I’ll tell you where he tells them in just a second. Be patient; don’t leave. “For behold [on his death bed], he saw that a part of the remnant of the coat of Joseph was preserved and had not decayed. And he said—Even as this remnant of garment of my son hath been preserved, so shall a remnant of the seed of my son be preserved by the hand of God and be taken unto himself, while the remainder of the seed of Joseph shall perish, even as the remnant of his garment.”
60 So half the garment perished and was rotten; the other half was preserved and had not decayed. So he was both sorrowful and joyful at the same time. “Now behold, this giveth my soul sorrow; nevertheless, my soul hath joy in my son.” Now there’s a nice contradiction; he joys and sorrows at the same time. This is a classic statement here. Let’s see what Thalabi has to say. We have the book of Thalabi here. I am very lucky to have it I have the only copy I have ever seen, although it’s fairly popular. So the great Thalabi made a famous commentary. This is the account of the prophets, how to explain them. His name means fox. He died in the year 1036. He made this survey at the end of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh century so the Persians would know what they were talking about when they read the Koran, who the prophets were and what they did.
61 [Thalabi] is talking here about the shirt of Joseph and the two things. This is what he says: “And when Joseph made himself known to his brethren, he asked them about his father. “What happened to our father, Jacob?’ “ He was in Egypt and he was the important man. The brethren had been brought before him, and he said, “What happened to my father after I left?” They said, “He lost his eyesight from weeping.” Then Joseph gave them the garment. He had the good half of the garment with him. That’s the part that clung to him and he still wore. Joseph handed them the garment, which is called the QAMIS. Our word chemise comes from that. “And this garment was the garment of the Garden of Eden. It had the weave and the pattern of the JANNA” That is the Garden of Eden. It is usually rendered just as paradise, before man fell. “It had in it the breath of the garden.” This is important. They believed that garments retained their odor. A person would come to you and say, “You come from Cordoba; let me smell the air of your garments that I may enjoy Cordoba.” The idea is that the air is more important than water. They always talk about the “air of a place before they talk about the water—I guess because they didn’t have any water. They had varieties of air.
61 [Thalabi continued] “... so that it never rotted.” It used the word decayed. He saw the part that never decayed. The half he had was the part that “never rotted, never decayed, and its threads never deteriorated. That was its true state.” It kept its true state. There were two parts. “... the remnant of the coat of Joseph which was preserved and had not decayed, whereas the other half shall perish even as the remnant of this garment.” It was decayed and rotten. We’ll hear about that one in a minute here. “Joseph gave that garment to them [this is important here], and this was a garment that had belonged to Abraham.”
61 [Thalabi continued] The idea of a garment of many colors is an invention. If you look in your Bible every time it mentions many colors the word colors (even in the commentary) is in italics because it is put in there by modern editors. It’s found in no ancient source. It’s not a garment of many colors at all. A garment of certain marks is the term that’s used here. We’ll see what it is in a second. “This garment had belonged to Abraham, and it already had a long history.” It’s history was lengthy because it went back to the Garden of Eden, you see. That’s the garment; it’s the only one. Just as we treat the story of Cain and Abel, we trivialize this. We say, “Joseph was the youngest kid, so his father favored him and gave him a pretty garment of many colors.” There is no mention in any ancient source of a garment of many colors. That’s an invention of modern editors trying to explain it. But here it was, the garment he gave him. It was the garment of the priesthood. No wonder they were jealous of him, they being the elder brothers and he the younger in the patriarchal line coming down from Abraham. This garment had belonged to Abraham and had come down to Joseph instead of to the other brethren.
61, 62 [Thalabi continued] You always get lost among these little tiny things here. “And he said to them, ‘Go with this very garment and place it upon the face of my father, and his sight will return to him.’ “ It’s a miraculous garment. “And then come back to me and bring all the family with you.” So they did. This is when the Israelites went into Egypt. They brought Jacob back with them, and the whole family came back to Egypt. Remember the story of Joseph and his brethren. “And when they had turned their faces toward Canaan and finally arrived there, their father, Jacob, said to them, ‘Behold, I detect in this garment the odor.’ “
62 [Thalabi continued] : “When they placed it upon the face of Jacob, he smelled also the smell of the Garden of Eden. For behold there is not in all the earth another garment that has that smell in it.” This is a unique thing; this is the garment. “For there is not in any other garment on earth of the winds of the garden of Eden, unless it is in this one garment.” So you can see why the brethren were so jealous; it was the garment of the priesthood. The commentator says he recognized that it was Joseph’s garment by feeling it first because it had three marks in it.
62 What they translate as “coat of many colors” is first KETONET. Our word cotton is related to that. KETONET is a cotton shirt. The Hebrew actually tells us that it was of adequate length. A garment which is PASSIM means a long garment which reaches down to the wrists and to the ankles. It’s quite different [from the other story]; there’s no mention of color there of any kind. The Vulgate says it was TUNICAM POLYMITAM, which means it was worked very subtly with extra threads. POLYMITAM means “extra thread work, special embroidery, special technique.” The Greek is CHITONA POIKILA. POIKILOS means “tattooed, embroidered, elaborate work.” A derived term of POIKILA is “of various colors, with spots or dots.” But it means with marks on something. Here it says he knew it because it had three marks on it. He recognized it from the marks. Of course, they couldn’t have been colored marks because he was blind when he felt the marks. He recognized it as belonging to his son Joseph.
62 [Thalabi continued] Then Judah says, “It was I who took the shirt which was dipped in blood to Jacob, and it was I who reported to him that Joseph had been eaten by a bear.” That’s what caused him such terrible sorrow. He asked Joseph, “Therefore, to atone for that let me be the one to take the sound part to him.” Another source tells us that it was Judah. “It was I who took the shirt that was dabbled in blood and gave it to Jacob and made him cry his eyes out; therefore, it is only right that I should be the one permitted to take this whole part of the shirt to him that his rejoicing in receiving it may be as great as his sorrow was in receiving the other, and joy would follow sorrow.”
62,63 Alma 46:24,25 Notice that his joy would be as great as his sorrow was. It says here [in Alma 46:25], “Now behold, this giveth my soul sorrow; nevertheless, my soul hath joy.” It’s the same story he is telling here. The only person that reports this anywhere is Thalabi You won’t find it in the Talmud. You won’t find it in the Midrash or the Mishnah. You won’t find it in the Bible. Where did Joseph Smith pick it up? He tells us it was an old story, familiar to the Nephites. He says here [in Alma 46:24] “Let us remember the words of Jacob.” He is telling the same story here.
63 Now let’s see what we left out here. Oh, the garment was rent. There’s no tradition anywhere that the garment was rent [with two exceptions]. In the tradition it was the garment of the garden, and it had the marks on it. That’s why Jacob recognized it, and that’s why the brethren were jealous obviously. It was the greatest favor he could possibly give him. This is a great thing. Here we get something in the Book of Mormon that really “sews things up.” ,
63 Alma 46:24 Then it goes on to his dialogue with death. It says all this happened on Jacob’s death bed. This is a dialogue between Jacob and death, which is very important incidentally. It has to do with another subject. He says, “Let us remember the words of Jacob, before his death, for behold, he saw that a part of the remnant of the coat of Joseph was preserved and had not decayed.” It uses the very words here. There was no SAQIM, which means a weakening of fiber, a sickness, a breakdown of any kind. “And he said—Even as this remnant of garment of my son hath been preserved, so shall a remnant of the seed of my son be preserved by the hand of God.” He makes this comparison.
64 Alma 46:29,32 Verse 29: “And it came to pass that when Amalickiah saw that the people of Moroni were more numerous than the Amalickiahites—and he also saw that his people were doubtful concerning the justice of the cause..” He hadn’t convinced them completely, you see. He wasn’t the popular party anymore. His own people were doubting it. He got the message, and he skipped out. He was an opportunist and a very shrewd man. You see what he was going to do. Moroni “thought to cut off the people of Amalickiah.” The one thing he didn’t want them to do was to go and join the Lamanites, of course. This was a standard procedure. The Lamanites were more fed up on war than the Nephites were. They didn’t want any at all because they had lost to Moroni. Moroni knew that he would stir up the Lamanites to anger. He didn’t succeed in doing that, but he got the king on his side. Then the king started stirring things up. Then all he had to do was bump off the king and take over. We’ll see what happened. [They thought] if Amalickiah goes out and gets the Lamanites with him, we are going to be in real trouble. That was very alarming. Therefore, the only thing he could do was to march out and “cut off the course of Amalickiah in the wilderness” as quickly as he possibly could, while he was still in the wilderness before he had made contact with the Lamanites. “And it came to pass that he did according to his desires, and marched forth into the wilderness, and headed the armies of Amalickiah.” They were cut off, but Amalickiah skipped out and fled with a small band.
64 Alma 46: 35 Whoever wanted to stop was free to do so. As I said, this was not the killing of prisoners of war or anything like that. ‘Whomsoever of the Amalickiahites that would not enter into a covenant to support the cause of freedom ... he caused to be put to death [in other words, if you don’t sign the surrender you are still at war]; and there were but few who denied the covenant of freedom.”
65 Alma 46:40 Now we have an extremely interesting note here. Verse 40: “And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land—but not so much so with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the cause of diseases, to which men were subject by the nature of the climate.” It says by nature of the climate there were certain diseases, especially fevers, in the land. They were able to get the best of them by many plants and roots. You notice how desperately we are searching in the jungles of Central and South America for roots. We know there are thousands of possible remedies that are disappearing every day. They say every fifteen seconds [another] species of plant disappears forever the way they are cutting down those forests there at tremendous rates to make grazing land for MacDonalds. That’s where the meat goes, incidentally. But notice how the Book of Mormon is ahead here with fevers, etc. The plants and roots which God had prepared could conquer the fevers. They were able to control fevers because of the very good remedies they had from these tropical plants. Quinine wasn’t discovered until 1840. Nobody knew that the quinine bark would cure these fevers until then. They didn’t know what could cure them. They didn’t know about mosquitoes or anything else. Again, here we have a wonderful insight. There are these occasional flashes of background in the Book of Mormon, which for the most part concentrates intently on the issues of salvation. But here it just happens to note in passing (it’s good to note) that it was fever country and there were diseases to which men were subject by the nature of the climate, which was tropical and humid. The fevers were held under control by the most excellent quality of the plants.
65,66 Now we have a very important thing. In this chapter of the Book of Mormon four different cultures are mentioned—four sharply marked cultures, which are hostile to each other. They are all related. We are going to list them this way. First of all, you will find the brotherhoods. We’ll call them that. These are very ancient societies that you will find from the earliest times. The first I’m going to call “the brotherhoods.” That’s what Santillana calls them, for example—the brotherhoods that Newton identified himself with. You recognize them in the Book of Mormon; they flourish. They are the Rechabites, the people that flee out into the desert. But they don’t flee disorganized, just to become desert wanderers, food gatherers, or anything like that. They are organized, and they form a closed society. Of course, this is Lehi and Nephi and Mosiah. Remember, Nephi leaves as soon as they land in the new world and goes out. They are very well organized. They build a temple. They keep the ordinances, etc. They are a brotherhood, brothers and sisters. It tells us how they lived and it describes their acts by the Waters of Mormon. It describes the Waters of Mormon so beautifully. There’s an ecstatic passage about the Waters of Mormon, and there is just such a passage in the scroll about the beauties of the place where they went out to settle. It mentions the trees that grow there, the groves. Remember, it keeps repeating how beautiful it is because there is salvation there
66 The people of Ammon were the same way, very well organized. They were living the gospel. They are subdued minorities that are described in the Book of Mormon. They never dominate in the Book of Mormon as the humble followers of Christ.
66 Then we have other cases like the forty-day ministry of Christ. During the forty days after the resurrection of Christ, we are told he taught the apostles in secret, and he taught them in secret before the resurrection. They said, why do you speak to us openly? You speak to all the rest of them in parables. Why do you speak to them in parables and speak to us openly in the clear? “He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” (Matthew 13:11.) It was a closed society with these instructions. They were the brethren and called each other “brother and sister.” They were the humble followers of Christ. These same societies existed throughout the ancient world.
67 And, of course, we all know about the Pythagoreans, who lived in sacred communities and gave us the Pythagorean theorem. They studied cosmology. They all studied these things. They all dressed in white, had common meals, and lived with their families there in sacred societies. They inspired the rage of all the others living around them and were persecuted and exterminated for that reason. They lived in the wealthy, lavish society of southern Italy at that time.
67 There were all kinds [of secrets and initiation in the early church]. After the resurrection he came and taught them. For the first time they knew what he was talking about. Both in 3 Nephi in the Book of Mormon and at the end of Mark, beginning with Moses and the prophets he laid all the scriptures open to them. Then for the first time their eyes were opened. Then they understood for the first time, and this was after the resurrection. We don’t have a word of the sermon he taught them. Anytime you find a very early Christian writing it is almost bound to begin, ‘This is the secret teaching that Jesus gave the apostles after the resurrection.” The people that had that knowledge called themselves Gnostics (the Knowers). Gnostics are fake Hermetics; they are fake brotherhoods. They did everything to fake. We have a great literature [on them]. The second century is the century of heresy. It’s not the century of enlightenment. Epiphanius has listed 88 sects of Gnostics of that time, each one claiming that it was the original church founded by Jesus and it was based on the secret knowledge that he gave the apostles after the resurrection. They were the Gnostics. This recognized the existence of the brotherhoods always.
67 Then there are the Seven Wise Men. If you go back to archaic times, there’s the idea that there were Seven Wise Men. They came together once every seven years and compared notes. Then they went out seeking and spreading wisdom, spreading healing throughout the human race. These were the SOPHOI, the wise men that traveled. They are connected with the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. They formed a sacred society, and Qumran is mixed up with the sacred society.
68 Then among the Moslems you have the same society. They are the Sufis. And remember Abraham had such a society, the 318 which he circumcised and took into the covenant. You couldn’t be a follower of Abraham unless you were taken into the covenant. The Cabala is very important. Cabal means to receive—what you have received back from Adam. [They claim] that it is the original knowledge, the gospel preached by Adam, then handed down through Seth to Noah, Enoch, Abraham and right down to our times. This is called the Cabala, the received knowledge that went back to the beginning. They form themselves into closed societies which are very secret. They study very advanced knowledge, astronomy mostly. That’s was you get in the book of Abraham. In the West they flourished as the Cathari, the Bogomils, the Waldensians, etc.
68,69 Then in modern times Utopian societies flourished that tried to get back to that. In America they reached their peak in the 1840s. There were half a dozen very much like the Church. In fact, [section 49] of the Doctrine and Covenants deals specifically with the Shakers. They were one of those groups.. They ate at a common table and had all their things in common, etc. They had all these idealistic ways. They believed that they had to live in complete chastity; therefore, they never married. But that wasn’t why they dwindled away to nothing. They grew very rapidly and were very popular when people wanted to retreat and join and finish their lives with them. That didn’t stop it; they just withered up is all. So many of these, like the Amana Society, are little and rather picturesque today—the Owenites and various model communities in New England. The first spiritualists started out in the same way. They started out in Maine and then they moved to Rochester, New York, right near Joseph Smith. Within ten years they had ten million members. Today there is nothing left of them. They tried to be these secret societies. Even in primitive societies you have fratres and clans. They are divided. The Hopis are divided into the Antelope Clan, the Snake Clan, the Bear Clan, and the Turtle Clan. They have their secrets, their initiations, etc. They are brotherhoods. You find these brotherhoods everywhere. And then you find monastic movements, beginning with monasticism in the fourth century.
69 Lehi was contemporary with the Buddha. Everywhere you have Buddhist monasteries all over the East, as you know—the monastic movements of the Buddhist brethren, succeeding the Lamas brethren, who were earlier. They are all the same thing. They live in these great monasteries. They think they are living the life of angels, a heavenly existence, etc. They are the brotherhoods. You find them Christian; you find them Buddhist, and you find them among the Moslems. This is our Type I, the brotherhoods, and they exist in the Book of Mormon. We want to consider the others because they have relevance.