Appearance
Temples & Freemasonry
The claim:
The CES Letter devotes four pages to the temple endowment. The argument is straightforward: Joseph Smith became a Freemason in March 1842, introduced the endowment seven weeks later, and therefore copied one from the other.[1]
"Just seven weeks after Joseph's March 1842 Masonic initiation, Joseph introduced the LDS endowment ceremony in May 1842."[1:1]
If the endowment came from Masonry, where did the theology come from?
The timeline looks damning until you widen it
Seven weeks. That's the entire case for plagiarism.
But the endowment didn't appear from nowhere in May 1842. Its theological content was revealed across a full decade before Joseph ever set foot in a lodge.
The Book of Moses (1830-31) supplied the creation and Fall narrative. D&C 84 (1832) described the oath and covenant of the priesthood. Washing and anointing ordinances were performed in the Kirtland Temple in January 1836. D&C 124 (January 1841) commanded building the Nauvoo Temple for specific priesthood ordinances -- fourteen months before Joseph's Masonic initiation.[2]
The seven-week window explains, at most, a handful of outward forms. It cannot explain the content.
The overlap is real -- and shallow
Nobody denies similarities exist. Handshakes, signs, certain dramatic elements -- they're there. The question is what percentage of the endowment they account for.
David Eddington's 2025 Interpreter study compared the full texts of the endowment and the Masonic first three degrees using conceptual overlap, vocabulary, and N-gram analysis. The result: roughly 10-17% overlap.[3] The endowment shares more vocabulary with the Book of Moses and Book of Abraham than with Masonic rites.
Matthew B. Brown documented dozens of Masonic elements with no endowment counterpart -- and dozens of endowment elements with no Masonic counterpart.[4] The creation narrative. The Fall. The Atonement. Progressive covenants of obedience, sacrifice, chastity, and consecration. Washing and anointing. The prayer circle. Sealing ordinances. Return to God's presence through the veil.
None of these exist in Masonry.
A plagiarist borrows content. What Joseph introduced in 1842 borrows a thin layer of presentation.
Ancient parallels run deeper than Masonic ones
The CES Letter argues Freemasonry has "zero links to Solomon's Temple" -- and uses that to block the claim that both ceremonies descend from ancient worship.[5] Fair enough. The apologetic response doesn't depend on Masonic lineage.
It depends on the endowment's own resemblance to ancient rites that have nothing to do with Freemasonry.
Egyptian Pyramid Texts (c. 2600-2200 BC) contain purification, anointing, clothing, and progression sequences. Israelite temple worship involved washing, anointing, and priestly garments (Exodus 28-29). Cyril of Jerusalem's Mystagogical Catecheses (c. 350 AD) describe stripping, anointing, washing, white garments, and a "new name."[6]
Eddington's textual analysis found Cyril's catecheses more similar to the endowment than Masonic rites are.[3:1] Joseph Smith had no access to fourth-century catechetical texts.
The 1990 changes prove the point backward
The CES Letter's third move is a contradiction trap: the 1990 removal of penalties and the Five Points of Fellowship means either God's revelation was flawed or the ceremony was man-made.[7]
That trap depends on treating every element as equally essential. Remove a covenant and you've gutted a revelation. Remove a presentation detail and you've updated a form.
Every covenant survived 1990 intact. What was removed? The most visibly Masonic elements -- the penalties and the Five Points of Fellowship. The elements that were Masonic-looking turned out to be presentation scaffolding, not the structure itself.[4:1]
Joseph Smith himself told Brigham Young the endowment was "not arranged right" and needed further organization. He never treated it as a frozen artifact.[8]
Biblical temple worship changed dramatically across the tabernacle, Solomon's Temple, the Second Temple, and Herod's Temple. A living church with continuing revelation adapts its worship. A museum preserves artifacts.
The endowment needs a source -- and Masonry can't supply it
The ceremony Joseph Smith introduced in 1842 teaches creation, Fall, Atonement, progressive covenants, and return to God's presence. It draws on a decade of prior revelation. It matches ancient temple and initiation patterns from Egypt, Israel, and early Christianity that Joseph had no way to access.
Masonry contributes a handful of outward forms and about 10-17% textual overlap. It contributes zero theology. Zero narrative. Zero covenantal content.
If Joseph plagiarized the endowment, he plagiarized the wrapping paper and invented the gift. That's not plagiarism. That's revelation wearing borrowed clothes.
Bottom line: The endowment shares surface forms with Masonry and deep content with ancient temple worship. Its theology was revealed years before Joseph joined a lodge, and the 1990 changes removed the most Masonic-looking elements while leaving every covenant intact.
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Temples & Freemasonry," no. 1, p. 107. ↩︎ ↩︎
D&C 38:32 and 43:16 (1831) promised an "endowment of power"; D&C 84 (1832) described the oath and covenant of the priesthood; D&C 124:40-42 (January 1841) commanded the Nauvoo Temple for baptisms for the dead, washings, anointings, and ordinations. See also "Kirtland Temple," Church History Topics, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/kirtland-temple ↩︎
David Eddington, "A Textual Comparison of Masonic Rites and the LDS Temple Endowment," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 66 (2025): 311-356. Eddington found Masonic rites are textually more similar to the Odd Fellows initiation than to the endowment. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-textual-comparison-of-masonic-rites-and-the-lds-temple-endowment/ ↩︎ ↩︎
Matthew B. Brown, Exploring the Connection Between Mormons and Masons (American Fork, UT: Covenant Communications, 2009). Brown catalogs elements unique to each ceremony, showing the overlap is largely formal rather than substantive. ↩︎ ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Temples & Freemasonry," no. 4, p. 107. ↩︎
Hugh Nibley, "The Early Christian Prayer Circle," BYU Studies 19, no. 1 (1978): 41-78. See also William J. Hamblin, "Aspects of an Early Christian Initiation Ritual," in By Study and Also by Faith, ed. John M. Lundquist and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1990), 1:202-21. For Egyptian parallels, see Hugh Nibley, The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment, 2nd ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005). ↩︎
Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Temples & Freemasonry," nos. 5-7, pp. 108-109. ↩︎
L. John Nuttall diary, February 7, 1877, recording Brigham Young's account that Joseph Smith said the endowment "was not arranged right but we have done the best we could under the circumstances." Cited in Truman G. Madsen, "Joseph Smith Lecture 7: Doctrinal Development and the Nauvoo Era," BYU Speeches, 1978. https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/truman-g-madsen/joseph-smith-doctrinal-development-nauvoo-era/ ↩︎