The Joseph Smith Translation: Of Firstlings, Firstborn, Lot, and Lineage

By Alvin H. Andrew · March 24, 2026 Especially this: It is interesting to note that from Adam until Jesus Christ the firstborn son never inherited the covenantal birthright and patriarchal priesthood. This was generally because of their unworthiness or perhaps as we see in the case of Ishmael, they were not born to the first wife. Biblically it was always a younger son who obtained the covenantal priesthood birthright among whom were Abel, Seth, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and others.

Very Interesting Info about the Facsimiles

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The Temple Hidden in Genesis: Recovering the Sacred Architecture of the Covenant Path

Meridian Magazine Patrick D. Degn · February 19, 2026 There is a way of reading Genesis that leaves us standing outside the text, admiring its antiquity the way one admires pottery behind museum glass. We note its literary structures, trace its documentary sources, catalog its ancient Near Eastern parallels, and move on—informed, perhaps, but entirely unchanged.

It is the peculiar tragedy of modern scholarship that it keeps immaculate records of things it has never really met. The text becomes a mere object of study: venerable, interesting, and firmly closed. A museum piece is lovely enough, but no one expects the pottery to suddenly speak; scripture, inconveniently for scholars, often does. A text that speaks has already smashed the glass case.

But there is another way of reading, older and stranger and more demanding, which insists that the text is a door rather than a display. The ancient rabbis who divided the Torah into its weekly portions understood this. They called each portion a Parashah, a “section,” but the word carries the scent of an opening up, an exposition. To read the Parashah was to enter it. The words cease to be ink and begin to behave like corridors. It was less like flipping a page and more like pushing open a well-oiled wooden door that creaks just enough to make you wonder what the Almighty is up to.