Adam-God

Adam Is Our Father and Our God

The doctrine which President Brigham Young proclaimed publicly on April 9, 1852, and which he taught consistently for the next twenty-five years, is no peripheral question. It touches the first principle of the Gospel itself: to know God, His character, and the path by which His children may become like Him. Article 14 of the Articles of Faith of the Church of the Firstborn states:1

“WE BELIEVE that God the Father has a Father, and that God our Father was once a man like us; that in the Beginning of Time He came down on our Earth as Adam, and suffered Himself to Fall and take upon Himself mortality, that He might become our Father in the Flesh and that we might become His children. Thus, in the beginning of Time, God our Divine Father came down upon this Earth and entered mortality, and laid down His life for us, just the same as Jesus Christ His Son did in the Meridian of time; and hence, as President Young stated it in his Proclamation to the world: ‘Adam is our FATHER and our GOD, and the Only God with whom we have to do.'”

The Proclamation — April 9, 1852

President Young’s discourse in the Tabernacle that day was no slip, no aside, no exotic speculation. It was a deliberate Proclamation, repeated on numerous occasions across the next twenty-five years, and ultimately incorporated into the very ordinances of the Temple. The Historian’s Office Journal entry for March 14, 1852 establishes that the doctrine had already been taught roughly a month before the public Proclamation, in a prayer circle attended by President Young and his closest associates in the Priesthood — the public sermon flowed from a prior private revelation.2

“Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! about whom holy men have written and spoken — He is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.”
— President Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 1:50 (April 9, 1852)

Multiple independent contemporary accounts confirm the substance of the discourse, and Fred Collier’s editorial work in President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity reproduces the parallel witnesses side by side — the doctrine cannot be dismissed as a single misquotation.

Not an Innovation, but the Doctrine of Joseph Smith

President Young did not invent the Adam-God doctrine. He inherited it. The evidence gathered in Fred Collier’s President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity shows that the teaching was given by Joseph Smith privately in Nauvoo to those whom he admitted into the inner sacred ordinances, and traces of it surface repeatedly in the Prophet’s own discourses — most directly in the King Follett Discourse (April 7, 1844) and the discourse of June 16, 1844, less than two weeks before his martyrdom.

The most explicit attribution comes from President Young himself, recorded in shorthand at the Quorum of the Twelve meeting of April 4, 1860, in which he addressed Orson Pratt before the Twelve. In that meeting, in the presence of the Twelve, President Young unambiguously testified that he received the doctrine from Joseph Smith and named President Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards as additional witnesses to the same teaching from the Prophet.

Joseph’s own June 16, 1844 discourse, given less than two weeks before his martyrdom, is unambiguous on the underlying principle:

“If Abraham reasoned thus — If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that He had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? And where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor? And everything comes in this way. Paul says that which is earthly is in the likeness of that which is heavenly. Hence if Jesus had a Father, can we not believe that He had a Father also? I despise the idea of being scared to death at such a doctrine, for the Bible is full of it.”

“I want you to pay particular attention to what I am saying. Jesus said that the Father wrought precisely in the same way as His Father had done before Him. As the Father had done before? He laid down His life, and took it up the same as His Father had done before.”
— Joseph Smith, discourse of June 16, 1844 (TPJS 373; History of the Church 6:474–477)

The line of testimony is unbroken: Joseph Smith taught it. Brigham Young proclaimed it. The Temple ordinances incorporated it.

Joseph Smith’s Adamic Foundations

The Prophet Joseph Smith had already placed Adam in a role far larger than conventional Christian readings allow. He identified Adam as Michael, the Ancient of Days, the father of the human family, and the presiding figure before whom all who have held keys must stand.3 That identification is weighty in itself: Adam Clarke and many other Christian commentators known in Joseph Smith’s world read the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7 as God the Father appearing in human form.4 Joseph’s revelation did not merely give Adam an honorific title; it identified Adam with the very figure many biblical interpreters already recognized as the Father in Daniel’s throne vision.

“Daniel in his seventh chapter speaks of the Ancient of Days; he means the oldest man, our Father Adam, Michael — he will call his children together and hold a council with them to prepare them for the coming of the Son of Man. He (Adam) is the father of the human family, and presides over the spirits of all men, and all that have had the keys must stand before him in this grand council.”
— Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 157

Joseph also located Adam-ondi-Ahman by revelation as the place where Adam will visit His people and sit as the Ancient of Days.5 In 1841, he taught that Adam did not commit moral sin in the Fall, explaining that Adam ate in fulfillment of divine decree. The same year, the McIntire Minute Book records Joseph identifying “the Great God” as Ahman,6 and furthermore stated that when praying we should envision or have “Referance to a personage Like Adam.” Then, in the Council of Fifty on April 5, 1844, Joseph explained that “Ahman” signifies “the first man or first God,” and that “Ahman Christ” signifies “the first man’s son.”7

These witnesses show Joseph revealing the doctrine progressively to the Saints while knowing its root principles from the earliest years of his ministry. In public, he identified Adam as Michael and the Ancient of Days, located Adam-ondi-Ahman by revelation, and opened the Ahman name-title system. In private, he taught the doctrine more emphatically to the trusted inner circle who received his highest Priesthood instructions. President Young later exemplified and proclaimed what Joseph had already restored: Adam is Michael, the Ancient of Days, the presiding father of the human family, and the Adamic name-title system reaches into the deepest vocabulary of Deity.

Zebedee Coltrin’s Early Vision of Adam and Eve

A further early witness comes from Zebedee Coltrin, who remembered a sacred visionary experience in the Prophet Joseph Smith’s circle. The vision is preserved in multiple nineteenth-century records: the Spanish Fork High Priests’ Record in 1875, the Salt Lake School of the Prophets report in 1883, Oliver B. Huntington’s 1885 diary account, and Abraham H. Cannon’s 1890 diary report.8

Fred C. Collier connected the setting of the vision with approximately April 1834. The 1875 and 1883 accounts involve Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Coltrin; the 1890 Abraham H. Cannon diary report, by way of Canute Peterson, names Sidney Rigdon in the same visionary setting. The dating is significant because Oliver Cowdery had already reported by January 1, 1834 that Joseph Smith was teaching Adam’s exalted status as Michael.9

In the Spanish Fork High Priests’ Record version, recorded from Coltrin on February 5, 1875, Coltrin said that Joseph promised the brethren they would see the glory of God. After the vision of Jesus, Joseph, Oliver Cowdery, and Coltrin prayed again:

“As I looked I saw the blue sky open; I beheld a throne, and upon the throne sat a man and woman. Joseph asked us if we knew who they were; we answered, no. Joseph answered, ‘That is Father Adam and Mother Eve.’ Their heads were white as snow and their faces shown with immortal youth.”10

The 1883 Salt Lake School of the Prophets report gives the same New Portage, Ohio setting and preserves another form of the identification:

“The heavens gradually opened, and they saw a golden throne, on a circular foundation, something like a light house, and on the throne were two aged personages, having white hair, and clothed in white garments. They were the two most beautiful and perfect specimens of mankind he ever saw. Joseph said, ‘They are our first parents, Adam and Eve.’ Adam was a large broad shouldered man, and Eve as a woman, was as large in proportion.”11

Oliver B. Huntington’s 1885 diary account shows that Coltrin continued to relate the vision decades later. Huntington’s report preserves the grove setting, the posture of the brethren, the opening heavens, and the appearance of the glorified Adam and Eve seen with the Prophet.12

Abraham H. Cannon’s 1890 diary entry reports what President Canute Peterson said he had often heard Coltrin relate. In that account, Joseph, Coltrin, and Sidney Rigdon prayed in a secluded place; after successive prayers they saw the Father, then “the Mother also,” and then the Savior added to the group.13

The Coltrin witnesses matter because they join Father Adam and Mother Eve to Joseph Smith’s earliest Restoration circle. They do not stand merely as later Utah speculation; they preserve a memory of Joseph Smith teaching and witnessing the identity of Father Adam and Mother Eve in the Prophet’s own ministry.

The Lecture at the Veil — February 7, 1877

If the April 1852 Proclamation was the public introduction of the doctrine, the Lecture at the Veil, delivered by President Young in connection with the St. George Temple’s dedication early in 1877 — a few months before his death — was its capstone. Cast as a sacred catechesis at the veil itself, the Lecture was incorporated into the Temple Endowment ceremony, the most sacred setting the Restored Gospel possesses.

It was administered as part of the Endowment for nearly three decades, and was removed from the ceremony under President Joseph F. Smith in the 1902–1905 period.14 From that point forward the doctrine was suppressed in official Church teachings. But the original text survives. Fred Collier’s Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Volume 1, Section 75, preserves the Lecture as President Young delivered it — his final formal witness to this doctrine.

Adam Came from Another World

The most striking element of President Young’s teaching is also its most consistent. Father Adam did not originate on this earth. He came here from another world, as an already-exalted, celestial being — a resurrected man who had passed through His own mortal probation, become a God, and now condescended to begin the human family on this creation:

“When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world … He is our Father and our God.”
— Journal of Discourses 1:50

The teaching is not unique to President Young. Anson Call — a friend of the Prophet who heard a number of his private teachings during the Nauvoo period — preserved a testimony, recorded in 1877 and reproduced in Appendix D of President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity, that Joseph Smith himself had taught this same doctrine years earlier:

“Now regarding Adam: He came here from another planet [as] an immortalized being and brought his wife, Eve, with him, and by eating of the fruits of this earth became subject to death and decay and he became of the earth earthy, was made mortal and subject to death.”
— Anson Call, recording Joseph Smith’s teaching, in President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity, Appendix D

This is the key that unlocks every other teaching. Why can our Father empathize with us in mortality? Because He has lived it. Why can He save us? Because He passed through the same probation we now face, and triumphed. Why does Christ call Himself the Son of Man — literally, in Hebrew, the Son of Adam? Because His Father, in the most concrete and personal sense, is Adam.15

Two Trinities, One Divine Family

The restored key distinguishes two distinct Trinities easily confused in casual reading:

  • The Creation Trinity: Elohim, Yahovah, and Michael — the three beings who organized this earth before its inhabitation. Elohim is the eldest of the three (the Great-Grandfather, in the genealogy of Gods); Yahovah is His Son and Michael’s Father (the Heavenly Grandfather); and Michael is the One who descended to become Adam, the Father of this creation.
  • The Godhead Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — three personages of the present Godhead, with whom we have to do. The Father here is Adam (formerly Michael); the Son is Jesus Christ; the Holy Ghost is Joseph Smith, the third distinct personage.

These are not the same three individuals filling the same roles. The common modern conflation of Yahovah with Christ exclusively is an error introduced after the Adam-God doctrine was abandoned. “Elohim,” “Jehovah,” “Michael,” “Adam,” “Father,” “God” — these are not unique proper names attached to one being only. They are shared titles of the divine family hierarchy, inherited by every exalted being in turn. Context indicates which person is meant. Reading the early Brethren without this key produces apparent contradictions; reading them with it produces perfect coherence. The fuller treatment can be found on the dedicated Two Trinities page, and in President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity and The Trinity and the Holy Spirits.

Mother Eve, the Divine Goddess

Father Adam was not alone. Article 15 of the Articles of Faith testifies:

“WE BELIEVE in the WORSHIP of our Mother in Heaven who is the literal Goddess of this Creation; She is our Mother Eve and stands by the side of Her Divine Husband, holding the Keys of Power and Dominion over all Her posterity.”
— Fred C. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn: Its Articles of Faith and a Short History, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 18 No. 1 (April 2001; 2nd ed. February 2012), 10

The earliest Hebrews knew Her. The Temple at Jerusalem held Her sacred symbols for centuries before Israel’s worship of the Divine Mother was gradually corrupted and edited out over time. Joseph Smith taught the doctrine of Mother in Heaven explicitly, and the early Latter-day Saints sang of Her in their hymnody — Eliza R. Snow’s “O My Father” (1845) and W. W. Phelps’s 1845 Nauvoo writings testify to the doctrine’s currency in the Nauvoo period. President Brigham Young then identified that Mother as Mother Eve. (See The Nature of Deity and The Matriarchal Priestesshood for the full evidence and additional primary sources.)

The Theology of Empathy

Why does it matter whether God the Father is Adam? Why does His identity bear on our salvation?

The answer is given by President Brigham Young’s own discourses, gathered by Fred C. Collier in The Gospel of the Father (a compilation of President Young’s discourses on the First Principle of the Gospel). A God who has never lived a mortal life cannot truly empathize with mortal beings. He cannot judge righteously what He has not Himself endured. He cannot save what He has not Himself overcome. He becomes, in His remoteness, the “unknown God” of which Paul preached at Athens (Acts 17:23) — venerated, perhaps, but never truly known.

But the doctrine President Young proclaimed reveals a different Father entirely: a being who walked this earth, who suffered hunger and pain and the temptations of mortality, who laid down His life for His children just the same as Jesus did. He is not distant. He is not abstract. He has been where we now stand, and He invites us to walk the path He has already walked.

Common Objections Answered

The Adam-God doctrine has been the subject of decades of confusion, much of it sincere. In Answers to Contradictions and Scriptural Problems Relating to the Adam-God Doctrine, Fred C. Collier addresses the two principal lines of attack: the claim that President Young contradicted himself in his teachings, and the claim that the Adam-God doctrine contradicts the Scriptures. The reader who finds the doctrine difficult to understand is invited to examine that work directly. Fred’s Answers to Adam-God Problems as Found in the Scriptures also addresses Luke 3:38, Moses 6, and related scriptural questions often raised against the doctrine.

The Ancient Witness

This doctrine is not a nineteenth-century innovation. It is the ancient testimony of the Hebrew patriarchs, restored in our day. The independent scholarly evidence — from the Ugaritic tablets, the New Testament, the Septuagint, the Dead Sea Scrolls, academic encyclopedias, and much more — converges on the same truth President Young proclaimed by revelation. That convergence is laid out in detail on the Nature of Deity page and in Fred’s New Light on the Ancient Hebrew/Christian Doctrine on Deity, Part 1 (1991).

Adam-God Frequently Asked Questions

Did President Brigham Young teach Adam-God as doctrine?

Yes. President Young taught the doctrine repeatedly, in public and private, across many years. The Adam-God Discourses page gathers the key sermon witnesses and explains why the doctrine cannot be reduced to a single misunderstood statement.

Did Joseph Smith prepare the foundation for Adam-God?

Yes. Joseph identified Adam as Michael and the Ancient of Days, revealed Adam-ondi-Ahman, taught the exalted status of Adam, and unfolded the Ahman name-title system before President Young proclaimed the doctrine more explicitly.

Is Adam-God the same as saying Adam replaces Jesus Christ?

No. The doctrine distinguishes Father Adam, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost in the Godhead Trinity. It does not erase the Son’s atoning mission. The relationship between Father Adam and Jesus Christ is treated together with the Two Trinities and Nature of Deity pages.

Why do critics call it the Adam-God theory?

The phrase “Adam-God theory” usually reflects later distancing from President Young’s teaching. This site uses Adam-God doctrine because the question is not whether a speculative theory existed, but what Joseph Smith, President Brigham Young, and the early witnesses actually taught.

Further Study

The publications below are the principal works on this doctrine. We recommend reading them in approximately this order:

Brief introductions

The comprehensive treatment

  • President Brigham Young’s Doctrine on Deity Vol. 1 (Collier’s Publishing Co., 1999) — a comprehensive synthesis of President Young’s teachings on the nature of God, drawn from his speeches, journal entries, and contemporary records.

Scriptural foundations

  • Answers to Adam-God Problems as Found in the Scriptures (2015) — Fred C. Collier’s direct response to scriptural objections involving Luke 3:38, Moses 6, the Joseph Smith Translation, and related Restoration witnesses.
  • The Adam-God Doctrine as Taught in the Bible (written in 1978 as a response to Walter Martin; published in Doctrine of the Priesthood in February 2014) — A broad biblical and Restoration-scripture argument for Adam as the Lord from Heaven and Father of the human family, tracing Paul’s Adam/Christ theology, Acts 17’s divine-lineage language, the Son of Man/Son of Adam title, Adamic names such as Ahman, and corroborating passages from Moses and the Pearl of Great Price.
  • The Father and the Son: The Two Gods of the Old Testament (1995) — Elucidates the pre-mortal roles of God the Father and His Son, explaining how and why Christ the Son is identified at various times by divine name-titles that also belong to the Father. The essay traces divine office, name, representation, and inheritance through scripture so that Father and Son are distinguished without denying the Son’s lawful use of the Father’s titles.

Ancient and scholarly evidence

  • New Light on the Ancient Hebrew/Christian Doctrine on Deity, Part 1 (originally awarded Best Paper at the 1988 Sunstone Symposium; published 1991 as Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 8 No. 1) — a study of ancient witnesses to the Father’s identity as El, drawing from Ugaritic texts, biblical testimony, the Septuagint, New Testament “Son of Man” language, Dead Sea Scrolls material, Restoration scripture, and early Latter-day Saint teachings to illuminate the Adam-God doctrine.
  • The Demise of the Hebrew Goddess (1991; Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 8 No. 2) — The worship of El and Asherah (Father and Mother) in ancient Israel, and the gradual corruption and erasure of the Mother from Israelite religion and later editions of scripture.

Theological depth

  • The Trinity and the Holy Spirits — The doctrine of the Godhead as Joseph Smith taught it; the identity of Joseph Smith as the Holy Ghost; the presiding relationship between the Holy Ghost and other Holy Spirits; and the harmonization of Joseph Smith’s early and late teachings regarding God and Spirit.
  • Answers to Contradictions and Scriptural Problems Relating to the Adam-God Doctrine (1991) — Systematic response to the two principal objections: the claim that President Young contradicted himself, and the claim that Adam-God contradicts scripture.
  • The Gospel of the Father — A compilation of President Brigham Young’s discourses on the First Principle of the Gospel and the Doctrine of Exaltation.

The Witness of Joseph Smith

The Prophet himself, in the King Follett Discourse delivered three months before his death, declared the doctrine that anchors all the others:

“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! … It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the character of God, and to know that we may converse with him as one man converses with another, and that he was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ himself did.”
— Joseph Smith, King Follett Discourse, April 7, 1844 (TPJS 345–346; History of the Church 6:303–305)

President Young later defended the doctrine in plain terms before the gathered Saints:

“Some have grumbled because I believe our God to be so near to us as Father Adam. There are many who know that doctrine to be true.”
— President Brigham Young, October 7, 1857 (Journal of Discourses 5:327)

And on October 8, 1854, President Young gave the testimony that fixes our hope of return forever:

“I tell you, when you see your Father in the Heavens, you will see Adam; when you see your Mother that bore your spirit, you will see Mother Eve.”
— President Brigham Young, October 8, 1854 (Teachings of President Brigham Young 3:363; cf. The Complete Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. Richard S. Van Wagoner, 2:844–846)

Notes

  1. Fred C. Collier, The Church of the Firstborn: Its Articles of Faith and a Short History from the Time of Adam to the Present, Doctrine of the Priesthood, Vol. 18 No. 1 (April 2001; 2nd ed. February 2012), 10. ↩
  2. The March 14, 1852 entry is preserved in the Historian’s Office Journal, volume 15, 1851 December 1–1853 January 16, Church History Library Catalog. The original manuscript is in longhand with frequent abbreviations and a few shorthand notations; it requires careful reading. The record has been reproduced and excerpted in various publications, but the manuscript remains the primary source for the event. ↩
  3. D&C 27:11 identifies Michael as Adam; D&C 107:53–57 places Adam/Michael at the head of the ancient patriarchal council; and Joseph Smith identified the Ancient of Days as “our Father Adam, Michael” in Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 157. Joseph repeated the identification at 167: Adam is “the first man,” “the first and oldest of all,” and Michael because he is “the first and father of all.” ↩
  4. Adam Clarke, commenting on Daniel 7:9, identified the Ancient of Days as “God Almighty” and observed that this was where “God the Father is represented in a human form.” ↩
  5. Joseph Smith’s May 19, 1838 history entry identifies Spring Hill as Adam-ondi-Ahman, “because, said he, it is the place where Adam shall come to visit his people, or the Ancient of Days shall sit, as spoken of by Daniel the Prophet” (History of the Church 3:34–35; Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 122; cf. D&C 116). ↩
  6. Joseph Smith’s March 1832 revelation on the pure language, printed in Fred C. Collier, ed., Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, volume 1, Part 17, 109–10, gives the name of God in the pure language as “Ahman” and the Son of God as “Son Ahman.” ↩
  7. Joseph Smith’s February 9, 1841 and March 9, 1841 teachings are preserved in the McIntire Minute Book and printed in Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith, 63–64. The April 5, 1844 Ahman statement is preserved in the Council of Fifty minutes: “The chairman explained the meaning of the word ‘Ahman’ which signifies the first man or first God, and ‘Ahman Christ’ signifies the first man’s son.” ↩
  8. The vision is preserved in the Spanish Fork High Priests’ Record, February 5, 1875; the Salt Lake School of the Prophets minutes, October 11, 1883; Oliver B. Huntington, Diary, 1885; and Abraham H. Cannon, diary entry for August 25, 1890. ↩
  9. Fred C. Collier dates the setting approximately from the surrounding narrative in History of the Church 2:50ff. For Oliver Cowdery’s January 1, 1834 statement that Michael is Father Adam, see Stanley R. Gunn, Oliver Cowdery: Second Elder and Scribe (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1962), Appendix A, 234, printing Oliver Cowdery to John Whitmer, Kirtland, January 1, 1834. ↩
  10. Zebedee Coltrin testimony, February 5, 1875, Spanish Fork High Priests’ Record, April 29, 1866–December 1, 1898, as printed in Fred C. Collier, comp., Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, volume 2 (Salt Lake City: Collier’s Publishing, 1993), 170. ↩
  11. Zebedee Coltrin testimony, October 11, 1883, Salt Lake School of the Prophets minutes, as printed in Collier, Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, volume 2, 210–11. ↩
  12. Oliver B. Huntington, Diary, typescript (2 vols.), 2:244, Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. ↩
  13. Abraham H. Cannon, diary entry for August 25, 1890, in Edward Leo Lyman, ed., Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle: The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889–1895 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with the Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2010), 123. The entry reports that President Canute Peterson had often heard Coltrin relate that Joseph Smith asked Coltrin and Sidney Rigdon to pray with him in the woods; after successive prayers, “they saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.” ↩
  14. The most direct testimony to the dating comes from Patriarch J. Arthur Horne, who recalled having received the Adam-God teachings during his Salt Lake Temple endowment in 1902 (before his mission), and noted that those teachings had been removed from the Temple ceremony when he returned in 1905. The recollection was preserved in writing by C. Jess Groesbeck, conversation with J. Arthur Horne, May 28, 1963, in Groesbeck, Elder’s Journal, vol. 1, 291 (private journal), Woodland, California; excerpted in Culley K. Christensen, The Adam-God Maze (Scottsdale, AZ: Independent Publishers, 1981), 214. Cf. Ogden Kraut, Michael/Adam (Dugway, UT: Pioneer Press, [1972]), 101; Anonymous, Quotations Dealing with the Relationship of Our First Earthly Parents to Our Heavenly Parents (1830–1978), section 4 (published online by Perry L. Porter, c. 2000). The dating is independently corroborated by the contemporary political context. The 1904 Reed Smoot Senate hearings publicly exposed the temple ceremony, after which President Theodore Roosevelt told Senator Smoot that the temple ceremonies should be “abolished” (Carl A. Badger Diary, February 12, 1905), and President Joseph F. Smith expressed willingness to remove from the ceremony anything “the Lord desired removed” (interview between Franklin S. Richards and President Joseph F. Smith, recorded in Carl A. Badger Diary, December 22, 1904); both Badger entries are reproduced in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1900–1909 (Salt Lake City: privately published, 2013). The 1906 Salt Lake Tribune exposé following Walter M. Wolfe’s testimony at the Smoot hearings identified the lecture as “the one delivered by Brigham Young at the dedication of the St. George Temple” (Mysteries of the Endowment House and Oath of Vengeance of the Mormon Church [Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Tribune, 1906], 8). David John Buerger surveys the documentary chain at length in “The Adam-God Doctrine,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 14–58, esp. footnote 76; Buerger also reports the same basic claim in Stewart Martin, The Mystery of Mormonism (London: Odhams Press, 1920), 262, and W. M. Paden, Temple Mormonism: Its Evolution, Ritual and Meaning (New York: A. J. Montgomery, 1931), 21, 26. Buerger’s analysis — though skeptical of the regularity of the practice across all temples — confirms the lecture was being given at the St. George Temple into the early 1890s (per the Edward Bunker, Sr. trial proceedings of 1890–1891), and that L. John Nuttall’s 1892 memorandum to the First Presidency confirmed: “A copy of the Lecture is kept at the St. George Temple, in which President Young refers to Adam in his creation, &c.” ↩
  15. The mainstream scholarly defense of “Son of Man” as “Son of Adam” is given most fully in Joel Marcus, “Son of Man as Son of Adam,” Revue Biblique 110, no. 1 (2003): 38–61, and 110, no. 3 (2003): 370–386. The earlier and influential treatment of the title’s royal-Adamic background is in Frederick H. Borsch, The Son of Man in Myth and History (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1967). ↩

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