Is there any evidence that the practices Joseph Smith “restored” really came from early Christianity?
There is abundant evidence. I could talk at length about ordinances such as baptism, the laying on of hands, temple rituals, and so forth. But to provide a detailed example, let’s consider the law of the fast. Now we know that early Christians fasted, but the Bible offers few details about how they fasted. It is understandable that in the absence of such revelation, there are many diverse forms of fasting among modern Christians, including practices such as doing without red meat on certain days, or giving up a favorite food for period of time, or just ignoring the issue altogether. But what did the earliest Christians do, and how does that related to LDS religion, which claims to be a restoration of the full Gospel of Jesus Christ? Insight into early Christian practices comes from a book that was accepted as scripture by many early Christians in the second and third centuries, but which was dropped from the canon by later Christian leaders. The book is the Shepherd of Hermas, apparent
