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Parley's Mountains
In 1837 Parley P. Pratt published A Voice of Warning wherein he specified the condition of the Earth as originally created. Like Mary Poppins miraculously pulling a multitude of items out of her modest bag, Parley unpacked many details from a few words of scripture.
Second, We hear the Lord God pronounce the earth, as well as every thing else, very good. From this we learn that there were no deserts, barren places; no stagnant swamps, no rough broken rugged hills, no vast mountains covered with eternal snow; and no part of it was located in the frigid zone, so as to render its climate dreary and unproductive, subject to eternal frost or everlasting chains of ice.On the subject of mountains, he continued:
Where no sweet flowers, the dreary landscape cheer;
Nor plenteous harvests crown the passing year:
But the whole earth was one vast plain, or interspersed with gently rising hills, and sloping vales, well calculated for cultivation; while its climate was delightfully varied, with the moderate changes of heat and cold, of wet and dry, which only tended to crown the varied year, with the greater variety of productions: all for the good of man, animal, fowl, or creeping thing; while from the flowery plain, or spicy grove, sweet odours were wafted on every breeze: all the vast creation of animated being, breathed naught; but health and peace, and joy.
But how far the flood may have contributed to produce the various changes, as to the division of the earth into broken fragments, islands, and continents, mountains and valleys, we have not been informed; the change must have been considerable.John Taylor approvingly quoted this passage in Government of God. However, perhaps this passage's biggest fan was Joseph Fielding Smith, who quoted it in at least three books, and alluded to it in at least one other publication. Bruce R. McConkie re-iterated Pratt concerning mountains in Mormon Doctrine under "Restoration of All Things":
When the earth was first created all the land was in one place and there were no mountains and valleys of the kind that now exist.Although he may not have realized it (though perhaps he did), by denying the existence of mountains before the Fall, Parley was entering into a discussion that had been carrying on in Western civilization for over two hundred years. It turns out that mountains have historically been viewed rather negatively. Up until the 17th and 18th centuries, mountains were generally (though not exclusively) viewed as warts or scars on the face of the earth because they were dangerous and forbidding, but also because they lacked classical properties of symmetry, regularity, and proportion. It was hard to believe that God would create such things, so they were often regarded as products of either God's curse following the Fall, or the Flood, and were generally ignored by artists.
In the 17th century, mechanistic theories of the earth's origin began to take root. A landmark publication was Thomas Burnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth, published in 1681. Burnet was a clergyman, but he realized that the Flood could not possibly have covered the mountains. Drawing on Descartes, he proposed that the Earth originated as a dead star, which had water at the core and a perfectly smooth surface above. As described by historian Peter Bowler [1],
"This surface was the paradise on which Adam and Eve and their children had lived. When they turned away from God, they were punished by the great flood--but the theory provided a natural explanation for this event in the form of a collapse of the crust into the waters beneath. Only irregular fragments of the original surface were left standing out of the water, forming the mountainous terrain of the present landmasses. Our punishment thus became permanent, because Noah's descendants were forced to live among the ugly and dangerous mountains (few as yet anticipated the romantic view that mountains are beautiful). In Burnet's view, we live on a ruined planet that matches our sinful state."At the same time, Burnet found that mountains gave him a sense of awe and turned his thoughts to God. Over the next century mountains would come to be viewed as sublime, and even beautiful, and artists reflected this change of attitude in their works. With this change came a resistance to the idea that the earth was ruined, and nature became the evidence of God's power. By the time Parley wrote, the change was more-or-less complete; however, for whatever reason Parley viewed mountains as less than "very good."
To Mormons, mountains represent a place of refuge and safety, as well as a sacred place of God's presence, either because temples have been built among them, or because in scripture they have served the function of temples on occasion. I don't know how President Smith and Elder McConkie reconciled their view of the non-creation of mountains with that depicted in the endowment, where God specifically commands the formation of mountains as an element of beauty. Parley P. Pratt wrote before the endowment existed, and I speculate that the explicit mention of mountains was added after the saints made their home among them. Whatever the case, all of this serves to remind me that although we are a restoration movement, we are still tied to our culture, which includes the culture and traditions of mainline Christianity, and that can affect how we interpret scripture.
References and Notes:
1. Bowler, Peter. Evolution: The History of an Idea, p. 32.
For more on the changing perception of mountains, see Marjorie Hope Nicolson's Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, which I can only claim to have browsed on Google Books.
For one brief treatment of Thomas Burnet (of many on the internet), see here.
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