7 Books Of Moses Pdf

[Siri]

Portions of the Book of Moses were originally published separately by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in 1851, but later combined and published as the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price, one of the four books of its scriptural canon. The same material is published by the Community of Christ as parts of its Doctrine and Covenants and Inspired Version of the Bible.[5]

The Community of Christ, formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS Church), began publishing portions of the Book of Moses in its canonical Doctrine and Covenants (D&C) in 1864. Section 22 of the D&C contains Moses chapter 1, and section 36 contains Moses chapter 7. The inclusion of these excerpts in the Doctrine and Covenants was officially approved by the RLDS Church in 1970.

The RLDS Church began publishing the complete Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible in 1867 (giving it the name "The Holy Scriptures" and more commonly known as the "Inspired Version"); the portions of the Book of Moses that are not contained in the church's D&C are contained within this larger translation.

In contrast to numerous scholarly analyses of Smith's translations of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham that began to appear in the 19th century, explorations of the textual foundations of the JST began in earnest only in the 1960s, with the pioneering work of the RLDS scholar Richard P. Howard and the LDS scholar Robert J. Matthews.[34][35] A facsimile transcription of all the original manuscripts of the JST was at last published in 2004.[36] Among other studies of the JST, Brigham Young University Professor Kent P. Jackson, a longtime student of these topics, prepared a detailed study of the text of the portions of the JST relating to the Book of Moses in 2005.[7]

The Book of Moses contains a detailed account of Adam's descendants. Genealogy from the Book of Abraham is shown below. Bold denotes individuals not from Genesis. The names Egyptus and Pharaoh are not present in the Book of Moses, but they are mentioned in the Book of Abraham, another book of Mormon scripture.

The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses is an 18th- or 19th-century magical text allegedly written by Moses, and passed down as hidden (or lost) books of the Hebrew Bible. Self-described as "the wonderful arts of the old Hebrews, taken from the Mosaic books of the Kabbalah and the Talmud", it is actually a grimoire, or text of magical incantations and seals, that purports to instruct the reader in the spells used to create some of the miracles portrayed in the Bible as well as to grant other forms of good fortune and good health. The work contains reputed Talmudic magic names, words, and ideograms, some written in Hebrew and some with letters from the Latin alphabet. It contains "Seals" or magical drawings accompanied by instructions intended to help the user perform various tasks, from controlling weather or people to contacting the dead or Biblical religious figures.

Copies have been traced to 18th-century German pamphlets, but an 1849 printing, aided by the appearance of the popular press in the 19th century, spread the text through Germany and Northern Europe to German Americans and eventually helped popularize the texts among African Americans in the United States, the Caribbean, and Anglophone West Africa. It influenced European Occult Spiritualism as well as African American hoodoo folk magic, and magical-spiritual practices in the Caribbean, and West Africa.[1]

An older magical text, a fourth-century Greek papyrus entitled Eighth Book of Moses otherwise unrelated to the Sixth and Seventh Books, was found in Thebes in the 19th century and published as part of the Greek Magical Papyri.[2]

No first version of this work has been established, but early versions began to appear as inexpensive pamphlets in Germany in the 18th century.[1] Elements of the "Seventh Book", such as "The Seven Semiphoras of Adam" and "The Seven Semiphoras of Moses" appear to have come from the seventh book of the earlier European copies of the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh.[3] The work came to wide prominence when published as volume 6 of Das Kloster (The Cloister) in 1849 in Stuttgart by antiquarian Johann Scheible.

Historian Owen Davies traces copies of the work from the 18th century in Germany.[1] After circulating there, the work was popularized in the United States first in the communities of the Pennsylvania Dutch.[1]

In the early 19th-century, European or European-American grimoires were popular among immigrants and in rural communities where the folk traditions of Europe, intertwined with European religious mysticism, survived. One of the earliest American grimoires is John George Hohman's Pow-Wows; or, Long Lost Friend, a collection of magical spells originally published in 1820 for Pennsylvania Dutch spiritualists known as "hexmeisters".[4]

While versions of The Sixth and Seventh Books were likely passed around German immigrant communities from the late 18th century, the 1849 Leipzig copy was followed by a New York printing, in German, in 1865, and an English translation in 1880. The growth of inexpensive paperback publication in the 19th century, like those of Chicago occult publisher L. W. de Laurence, helped the work gain popularity outside German communities.

The boom in inexpensive publishing, and the interest in Spiritualism helped the work gain popularity in the African-American population of the United States, and from there, the Anglophone parts of the Caribbean.

From 1936 through 1972, the folklorist Harry Middleton Hyatt interviewed 1,600 African-American Christian root doctors and home practitioners of hoodoo, and many of them made reference to using this book and other seal-bearing grimoires of the era, such as the Key of Solomon. When Hyatt asked his informants where such books were purchased, he was told that they could be had by mail order from hoodoo suppliers in Chicago, Memphis, or Baltimore.[7]

In the West Indies, the book became one of the central texts of Jamaican obeah and was counted among the founding works of the "Zion Revivalist" Christian movement and the Rastafari movement of the early 20th century.[1] The influential Jamaican musical group Toots and the Maytals, for instance, released in 1963 the song "Six And Seven Books Of Moses": its lyrics list the accepted books of the Old Testament, ending in "... the Sixth and the Seventh books, they wrote them all."[8][9]

In early 20th-century British West Africa and Liberia, The Sixth and Seventh Books was adopted widely. It served as a source for "Christian Magic", both by West African spiritualist Christian cults and "assimilated" Africans. In colonial Gold Coast and Nigeria, it was seen as a "western" form of magic that might be used by educated Africans seeking access to Britain or its power, much like Masonic ritual or Rosicrucianism. The Nigerian press in the 1920s regularly featured advertisements for copies of The Sixth and Seventh Books and other Christian occult books.[10]

It was also influential in Christian occult movements in Anglophone West Africa,[1] and West African religious movements which blended Christianity and traditional magic made use of the work. Josiah Olunowo Ositelu's seals and mystical written incantations, used in the Nigerian Church of the Lord (Aladura) were likely derived from the Sixth and Seventh Books.[10]

Versions of this work circulated throughout Scandinavia and Central Europe. In Sweden and Finland these books are compiled and published under the titles Den Svarta Bibeln and Musta Raamattu, respectively, meaning "The Black Bible".[citation needed]

The printed texts of The Sixth and Seven Books of Moses (from 1849) combine two purportedly lost short Biblical texts with several contemporary essays and half a dozen purported writings of those who kept this knowledge and practiced its use through history, dated from Biblical times to the 17th century. These works attempt to paint a portrait of secret knowledge which Moses was given by God, and then handed down father to son until King Solomon, when it was handed to Priests, and finally, Talmudic scholars. In Christian circles, the text appealed to the same authority as did Biblical apocrypha: Biblical texts outside the current Biblical canon.

Containing numerous allegedly magical spells used to summon spirits to do the will of the conjurer, the books are attributed to works in which Moses sets forth the magic which enabled him to defeat the magicians of Egypt, part the Red Sea, and perform the acts attributed to him in the Old Testament.[11] Although these are allegedly Kabbalistic in nature, there is very little or no influence of Kabbala within the pages. Most texts are reputed to be Hebrew, passed to the editors through European Talmudic scholars or Christian Medieval ecclesiastics who were privy to secret Biblical texts. Some of the texts are allegedly translated from a text written by Canaanite magicians and keepers of the Samaritan Pentateuch in the "Cuthan-Samaritan language", a language considered extinct since the 12th century.

No complete manuscripts older than Scheible's 1849 printing are extant, and the claimed origin must be regarded pseudepigraphic and spurious. It is rather of a school of European Medieval and Enlightenment grimoires, such as The Key of Solomon, The Red Dragon, Petit Albert and others.[1] Elements appear directly reprinted from Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1531) and an 18th-century German translation by Gottfried Selig of the Hebrew Sepher Schimmush Tehillim (The magical uses of the Psalms).[12]

The vast majority of the printed works of 1849, a New York German printing of 1865, and the first English public printing of 1880 are additions to the reputed biblical books. In the 1880 edition, for instance, "the Sixth Book of Moses" and "the Seventh Book of Moses" run only from page 6 to 28, making up 23 of the 190 pages. The vast majority of the work is appendices, restatements of similar seals and incantations, reputedly from those Kabbala teachers to whom this knowledge was passed. Finally, there are sections including lists of the powers associated with each of the Hebrew "Names of God", the powers and use of reciting each of the Psalms and each Hebrew letter.[13]

c80f0f1006