REFLECTIONS ON THE "ROD OF JESSE" AND THE"ROOT OF JESSE" My son Mark asked a question in one of his letters about the "Rod out of the stem of Jesse". I'm not sure I have the resources here in China to answer in much detail, but if I can be trusted on sources and lack of footnotes, it is generally understood in the Church that the Rod of Jesse (see D & C 113:3) is Jesus and that the Root is Joseph Smith. We are of course accustomed to thinking of stems proceding out of roots, and rods out of stems. But apparently the ancient Israelites considered things the other way around -- as, interestingly enough, do the Chinese. We put the small and the detailed before the large and general (street number, street, name, city, state, then nation, whereas the Chinese start with the nation, then the province, then the town, then the street, then the house number. Most of us Anglo-Saxons in the Church are identified in our Patriarchal Blessings as being of Ephraim. So how does that allow Joseph Smith to be of Jesse, who was of the tribe of Judah? Well, first off D&C 113:6 says the root "is a descendant of Jesse as well as of Joseph". And Joseph was the father of Ephraim who (together with his brother Mannaseh) received the blessing from Israel in place of Joseph so that, in effect, Joseph would receive a double blessing for being the savior of the House of Israel at the time of the great famine which brought them to Egypt. Isaac Asimov reminds us in his Guide to the Bible that the great, great grandmother of Jesse (the father of David, the second and perhaps most successful and famous King of Israel -- through whose bloodline the Redeemer was to come) was Ruth, who was a Moabitess and not even of Israel, though her husband Boaz was. So David, and all the Royal bloodline of Judah, had non-Jewish blood, which many interpret as an early reminder from God that his salvation was to all nations, not just Israel (or Judah -- though traditional Judaism failed to get the signal. Remember that even after all Christ's teachings, St. Peter the first head after Christ of the new Christian Church required a special vision before he'd accept Paul's taking the Gospel to the Gentiles). Asimov also instructs us that Joshua, Moses' successor, was of Ephraim and that most of the early generals who completed the conquest of Canaan were Ephramites. Indeed, Ephraim got so used to leading Israel that when Eli chose the Benjamite Saul as first King, the Northern Tribes, used to being led by Ephraim, never gave Saul the support required to keep greater Israel safe. (Reminds one of how Scottish Prince Charles Stuart was beaten by the English when, being unfamiliar with tradition, he permitted another Clan take the place of McDonald on the right flank of his army and the McDonalds sulked in their tents while Scotland was lost). Indeed, Asimov argues, during much of this two hundred year period, it appears that Judah in the far south near-desert region of Canaan had little interchange with the rest of Israel and may have come close to extinction as seems to have happened with the tribe of Simeon, even further to the south, as Simeon intermarried with the peoples of Moab and Edom. When the Judahite David eventually was chosen to replace Saul he was never accepted by Ephraim and the northern tribes. Following the reign of David's son Solomon, the Kingdom broke into two parts, Israel in the North and Judah in the South. However, Jehoram, the seventh king of the Davidic line, married Athaliah the daughter of Ahab of Israel. So all subsequent Kings of Judah carried the blood of both Judah and Ephraim (Joseph). And Jesus, who as Matthew tells in Chapter I of his gospel was not only a direct descendant of David, but legitimate heir to the throne of Israel (which Robert Graves, the noted British writer, student of antiquity, and author of the quasi-historical King Jesus tells was known to Pilate and lay behind his political decision to go along with the mob crying for Jesus' crucifixion to avoid the possibility of his actually becoming so popular that he might lead a movement for Jewish independence from Rome). Now it was also taught in the early Restoration that Jesus was both married and had children. I remember reading a copy of a sermon by Charles W. Penrose, Counselor to Joseph F. Smith, which argued that under ancient Jewish practice a man could not preach or be a rabbi until he'd fulfilled these norms. I've also read similar statements in the Journal of Discourses, but can no longer remember just which Apostles were giving these sermons. Of course the Church has learned through sad experience that it is sometimes better not to teach such "hard doctrines" openly, "casting pearls before swine", since the World doesn't understand them and uses them as ammunition in their charges that we are not a "Christian" denomination. Interestingly, as I've written elsewhere, some ten years ago a historian, a linguist, and an archeologist took up this same line of argument (which seems indeed to reflect the realities of Jesus' time) and, encountering each other at the Biblioteque National in Paris while doing their research, ended up consolidating their efforts. The results were published as Saint Greal et Sang Real . The argument of the book is that the Holy Grail myth was a clever phonetic pun (depending on whether one pronounces the "g" in connection with the first word or the second, the "t", of course, being silent in French). The intent of the secret political society based on the Grail myth was to disguise and protect the Royal Israelite bloodline, which in God's Plan was destined to inherit rule not only over Israel but over the whole earth; but which even at this early age was encountering the same problems of misunderstanding (or perhaps too clear understanding) of the challenge this presented to the authority of the Roman church and various secular kingdoms. The authors present (not entirely convincingly to be sure) evidence that Jesus' Uncle Joseph of Aramithea transported the Royal consort and Royal children to the Bouche du Rhone not far from Montpellier during one of his trading trips. Mary and the child(ren) shortly thereafter took up residence in the Bas Pyrenees from whence within a couple or three generations Merovis, the eponomys ancestor of the Merovingian dynasty struck out to conquer France and the world. All subsequent Kings of France and, by intermarriage every royal bloodline in Europe, carry the blood of Merovis (and hence by extension the blood of Jesus, Jesse, Judah, Ephraim, and Joseph). It is at least entertaining to reflect on all the folklore and religious non-conformity that has always surrounded Montpellier and the Pyrenees Region, the home of the Albigensian, Cathar, and later Huguenot rebellions against the enforced (apostate) orthodoxy of Rome. Lola and I made it a point to visit Aix la something (not far from Aix-les-Thermes, which we mistakenly drove to first) where we found that, indeed, as the authors had discovered, there is still a flourishing if underground heretical movement which believes this tradition of Jesus' child(ren) and has a local church full of iconography commemorating it. There is, of course, a traditional orthodox explanation for the statue of the mother and child, but when the local caretaker understands that the visitor already knows of the alternative and true meaning and is of sympathetic persuasion, she opens up with the whole story reflected in Saint Greal and Sang Real. Now to my recent genealogical work in the parish of Dudley St. Thomas, Worcs. I haven't previously reported that as well as a hundred and fifty some odd Timmins names (I'm still convinced that the Johannah Timmons that Edward married in Penryn, Cornwall was likely of Huguenot ancestry and from just the region of France we're talking about), there were innumerable Skidmores. I will be recalled that Grandfather T's sister married Cyrus Skidmore. And with the small number of families in the Dudley St. Thomas parish four hundred years ago there have to have been shared Timmins/Skidmore genes in even earlier generations, though I ran across no direct Timmins/Skidmore marriages in the registry. At any rate, a Skidmore gal (Lorrie), married to Kevin Call, a military lawyer, lived a floor above us in Paris. She and Kevin had books and books of genealogical records compiled by Kevin's older brother, a professional genealogist, tracing any number of prominent LDS families back to royal bloodline connections. Included among such connections was the Joseph Smith family with the royal families of Britain, France, and Spain. A close friend as in a quiet moment told me that his family is similarly connected through the Lucy Mack (Smith) connection. Altogether it's a smaller gene pool in both the world and the Church than we often recognize. Studying a genealogical chart on the wall of his office, I once observed that Congressman Dan Marriott's genes are shared with half a dozen Presidents of the U.S. So it shouldn't be too surprising to learn that Joseph Smith is a descendent through his Merovingian ancestry of Jesus, David, Jesse, Ephraim, and Joseph. Here then is the completion of the circle of meaning of "the rod out of the stem out of the root of Jesse" with which we started our inquiry. Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration was not only a descendent of Joseph of Egypt, as prophesied in the Book of Mormon, but a descendent of Jesus Christ as revealed in the Doctrine and Covenants and hence legitimate founder/restorer of the Kingdom of God in the last days and heir to the throne of Judah; but also, being of the blood of Ephraim, heir to the throne of Israel and Judge of the gathered tribes in the Last Days as implied in the words of the song Praise to the Man. Reading America's Secret Aristocracy by Stephen Birmingham I found he cites a John Henry Timmins as being one of the Boston elite in the mid-1800s. John Henry's daughter married a grandson of President John Adams. Because our family name is a bit uncommon, I always look up Timminses in the phone book. While we lived in Lexington and Cambridge for almost three years, I never run across any New England Timmins'. I've written Birmingham to see if his preparation notes for the book can tell me any more about this John Henry. There is a well-known Jules Timmins in Quebec, a noted American journalist Bascom Timmins, and a Lane Timmins who was Director of a State Department Office of which I was later Deputy Director -- the diplomat and journalist both from the North Carolina branch of Huguenot immigrants Mark's grandfather ran across in the records. I'm pretty well convinced our Cornish ancestors, too, were Huguenot refugees who came to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, but neither grandfather T. nor I have succeeded in linking up with either the Canadian, Carolina, or French Timmins' lines.