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Note the promise in Malachi 3:20 (KJV 4:2) that “the Sun of Righteousness will arise with healing in his wings” (= 3 Nephi 25:2, Ether 9:22, erroneously reading “Son” for “Sun”), the “rising Sun” of Luke 1:78, or indeed the claim in Psalm 84:11 that “Sun and suzerain is Yahweh-God” (Dahood). See Revelation 1:16, in which Jesus’ “face shone like the sun in full strength” (Revised English Bible with Apocrypha [1989]). Hellenistic Judaism did identify Yahweh with the Sun, and the glyptic art of the ancient Near East is rife with winged sun-disks, which are commonly taken as the symbol of the king or head of pantheon. In the Levant, of course, winged sun-disks were everywhere the symbol of Semitic ʼEl, and King Hezekiah of Judah used the winged scarab as his royal symbol. Moreover, in the Qumran scrolls, we find “His eternal sun will shine, and his light will be kindled in all the corners of the earth, and it will shine on the darkness,” 4Q541 (4QAaronA/4QAhA) 24 (25), and 4QTestLevi.
And when we also consider some of these:
“God Almighty Himself dwells in eternal fire; flesh and blood cannot go there, for all corruption is devoured by the fire,” (Joseph Smith, HC 6:366)
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; He shall dwell on high:” (Isaiah 33:14-16)
“All men who are immortal dwell in everlasting burnings” (Joseph Smith, HC 6:366)
“I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire; also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son” (D&C 137:2-3)
Are we suggesting that God lives on the sun, and that the earth will become like the sun when it is celestialized?
Very nice and well said!
In his 1812 Dictionary, Webster describes one of the meanings of the word “square” to be “exact” and “honest.” In the quote from Revelation above, “four square” may therefore symbolize perfection. If so, what then may the perfect cube symbolize in the same quote?
Typo correction: “1828 Dictionary”
I want to acknowledge a problem in the essay above.
When I went looking for statistics on the size and mass of the Sun while I was thinking about the essay, I found an online item by Tim Sharp entitled “How big is the Sun?”
http://www.space.com/17001-how-big-is-the-sun-size-of-the-sun.html
I copied some notes from it that were relevant to my point, stuck them among some other thoughts that I had jotted down for the piece, and then left off writing for a few days. When I came back, I checked the reference to the Lissauer and de Pater book and proceeded.
Now, though, a critic is publicly attacking me for plagiarism.
His charge has caught my attention. I agree that what I ended up writing is closer than it should be to my source. When I compared the two, frankly, the degree of that closeness surprised me.
So I want to expressly and gratefully acknowledge my debt to Tim Sharp’s article for material (particularly the numerical data) in the second and third paragraphs of my Introduction.
The possibility of this kind of thing has always concerned me. When one writes a lot, drawing on a multitude of sources, there is always the possibility for such a slip-up. And, plainly, I slipped up.
The data that I cited are widely available, and not unique or proprietary to Tim Sharp’s article, which was simply a convenient source that came up first in a Google search. Nor is his particular language especially ususual. I could easily have rephrased my presentation of the data, and, honestly, I thought I had. But, as it turns out, I hadn’t. Not enough, anyway.
At this point, I think the most efficient and practical thing to do is probably to acknowledge my use of Tim Sharp’s article. I’ll see if it’s possible and practicable to rephrase paragraphs two and three somewhat, but, to be honest, that seems to me a rather artificial exercise once the connection between what I wrote and what he wrote has been granted. It’s not as if I’m trying to cover that connection up, or as if I could do so.
It turns out that I can make stupid mistakes.
Some changes have now been made to the text, and Tim Sharp’s article has been credited in note 3.
I’m aware that the critic who made my mistake public almost certainly didn’t mean me well, but I thank him, nonetheless.