Reddit mentions of Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness And The Concept Of Apostasy

Here's some thoughts:

1. One thing I've come to realize is that families are actually a really fragile thing. They're very much not something that in and of themselves are durable and able to last forever. There's so many that are broken by infidelity, divorce, and even little things like drifting apart from each other. So when God implements this temple sealing, it's to give divine strength to the family unit to transform it into an eternal unit.
   
   
2. The argument Joseph Smith makes is that Jesus Christ is Yahweh, usually anglicized as Jehovah and substituted as "the Lord," while God the Father is Elohim, usually just translated as "God." It's actually an argument that makes more sense in the actual Hebrew and not the King James Version. I have a copy of the Jerusalem Bible, which uses the name Yahweh instead of "Lord" and the difference is a lot more stark. You also might want to read The Father and the Son, which is the official explanation by the First Presidency and the Twelve as to the relationship between God the Father and the Son.
   
   
3. I'm reading a book about the doctrine of the apostasy and how it should be viewed in a historical manner, and yes, there's a lot of excellent questions as to how the apostasy exactly happened. Part of this is that first century records are really poor about these sorts of things. My personal view on this in a historical manner is that the priesthood authority was lost sometime during an age where the church was very disorganized, not only on an organizational level but also doctrinally.
   
   An interesting example would be Origen. Origen is a very important third century theologian from Alexandria who, during his life, was considered orthodox, but afterwards became known as a heretic and Justinian condemned his writings to the flames. During his life, he got into a massive controversy over his ordination to the priesthood. At that time, a person could not preach without the priesthood. Bishops and other church leaders really liked him and his thought and they started inviting him to preach and participate in debates. The bishop of Alexandria was not happy about this because Origen was not a priest. So when he was travelling in Palestine the bishop of Caesarea, who was not under the thumb of the bishop of Alexandria, decided to ordain him to the priesthood. Because Origen lived in Alexandria and thus, in Latter-day Saint thinking, "had his records there," the bishop of Alexandria was livid. He kicked Origen out of the priesthood, but the bishop of Caesarea didn't accept the bishop of Alexandria kicking Origen out of the priesthood. So, as you can see, there's a bit of a unresolvable spat there. That's a lot of the reason why the emperor or the eventually the pope was even looked to--there needed to be somebody to arbitrate these sorts of things.
   
   Does that mean that the Catholic Church is evil? No. They're a well-meaning organization and that Church should be lauded for the parts of Christianity they have preserved. But we can also believe too that the Catholic Church developed on a different path that was different from the will of God. As for why it could not have been restored sooner, I don't exactly know--it's difficult when we're talking about 1500 years of history to pin down every reason why God couldn't have sent an angel down with the restored gospel like he did to Joseph Smith. In all honesty, it's something beyond what history can answer, and we basically have to read God's mind at that point.
   
   Hopefully that helps to answer your questions a little, but if you have more, I'll see what I can do to answer them.

Talmage's Great Apostasy is very dated and quite inaccurate. It relies on a lot of protestant polmetics. A much better, more up-to-date option is: Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness And The Concept Of Apostasy

https://www.amazon.com/Standing-Apart-Historical-Consciousness-Apostasy-dp-0199348146/dp/0199348146/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

You can see the announcement in BYU Studies here: https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/standing-apart-mormon-historical-consciousness-and-concept-apostasy

A great book on the history of the Apostasy within Mormonism is "Standing Apart: Mormon Historical Consciousness and the Concept of Apostasy" published by Oxford University Press.

> Since the early days of Mormonism, Latter-day Saints have used the paradigm of apostasy and restoration in their narratives about the origin of their church. This has generated a powerful and enduring binary of categorization that has profoundly impacted Mormon self-perception and relations with others. Standing Apart explores how the idea of apostasy has functioned as a category to mark, define, and set apart "the other" in Mormon historical consciousness and in the construction of Mormon narrative identity. The volume's fifteen contributors trace the development of LDS narratives of apostasy within the context of both Mormon history and American Protestant historiography. They suggest ways in which these narratives might be reformulated to engage with the past, as well as offering new models for interfaith relations. This volume provides a novel approach for understanding and resolving some of the challenges faced by the LDS church in the twenty-first century.
>

One of the authors (Miranda Wilcox) is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University, and Oxford University Press has consistently been publishing very high-quality academic books on Mormonism for the last decade.