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I wasn’t aware that Adam and Eve wrote the Book of Ether, who knew?
“We believe Adam and Eve were this planet’s first humans and first Christians.” –
Elder Neal A. Maxwell
See:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1993/10/from-the-beginning?lang=eng
Yes, we do. Thank you for stating the obvious. And your point is?
“According to her, Moroni’s purpose is to Christianize those former Jaredite writings…” Rubbish!
If I might take the liberty of restating Elder Maxwell’s sentence to make the point clear:
“We believe the righteous Jaredites were descendants of this planet’s first humans and first Christians and were Christians themselves, like Adam and Eve.”
See also:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/joseph-smith-revealer-christ/
Righteous early Jaredites maybe, but most of their history clearly shows that they were not. Certainly the way Mormon used their history as a moral warning never acknowledges them as any form of “Christian.” Good beginnings don’t always create good endings.
I believe I understood you initially. I think you may misunderstand me, though. To Christianize does not imply that the Jaredites weren’t Christians, the idea you consider rubbish. Instead, these scholars who use the term Christianize suggest to my mind that the words attributed to Ether lack extensive, explicit Christian elements in them. It’s merely a comment on the available text. Moroni adds, then, in their mind a clear Christian focus to what we have of Ether. We know from Ether 12 and 13 that Ether was a Christian prophet. He preached repentance and “saw the days of Christ,” according to Moroni (13:4).
That’s not what I gathered from reading that, but I suppose I can go with your reading if correct and as describing some different kind of Christianity than I have heard of.
I don’t like the idea of Christianizing something already Christian which Welsh seems to me to be proposing.
The doctrine of many dispensation heads, from Adam to Joseph Smith, all pointing to/revealing Jesus/Jehovah to mankind (becoming Christians until they apostatize) should not be foreign to anyone in the Church.
Ether 9:22 also indicates some Christianity.