Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

[_Kishkumen]

thanx kish and by the way your really good insights and logical discussion added class to what would have been a short and sweet thread! good work!

k

Thank you, kairos!

[Guest]

And how much time did you waste at World Table? How much time did you spend here revealing the shenanigans over there? How many times did you ask us what we thought of your interactions over there?

Too much, I did go into the WT with a attitude that I could discuss Mormon thought with folks like DCP and Russell without the snarkyness...it didn't work...I had 200 or so posts there, more than half were a waste of time. I did learn from our own Runta there though, I don't think that was a waste.

No worries! We are all just regular folks here, and I don't think any one of us claims to be a perfect being. I know I don't. If you can't face the fact that your denigration of Nibley smacks of self-justification, I think we can all be sympathetic. Do I deny that I do some of the same crap?

Nor do I...my post was honest. And I believe your post was circular in reasoning. I honestly believe that Nibley had a means to and end and at all costs was determined to make Mormonism real, while having to know his research was bogus. He is way to intelligent to not know his footends were all over the place.

I do it all the time. I try to appear like a decent human being. I fail constantly, but I seem determined to persuade others that I am. Oh well.

I have a biblical answer for that, but this is not the site for that.

Of course there were no GAs. There probably wasn't even a church. But Nibley's extrapolation is perfectly in line with LDS assumptions and doctrine. Mormons incorrectly believe that Jesus established a sophisticated Church organization, which looked very much like the LDS Church looks today. Nibley buys into that. He slots that into the blank space that is Christ's 40-day post-resurrection ministry.

I believe he knows he is doing so...and too me that is very deceitful. What brought me into this was on a forum a TBM started a thread that only Mormons know what Jesus did in those 40 days and used Nibleys talk as a proof text...he bought it hook line and sinker...and is calling folks like me who actually took the time to back track FAIR propaganda and read the footnotes that lead nowhere...haters and "antis"...when I am the one telling the truth?

So too me Kish, that is wrong of Nibley, very wrong...and I believe he knows there were no GA...and to me that is a lie. If you believe he thinks there were, then fine...but it is tough to give the man praise as a researcher and author.

This isn't rocket science, Mark. He could do all of that, believe it was true, and not be a liar or fantasist. He was behaving like a literalist believer.

True, but equally he could know, and equally he could be lying for the Lord believing as you wrote, but knowing there was no evidence for it ...looking for one bit of "evidence' that can be twisted to somehow create a "evidence" that supports ones testimony.

Kerry basically wrote he did the same thing, and that he knew it, at least later in his season as a apologist. Having a email chain to come up with answers, searching through mounds of data and picking pieces out, out of context to support the pre-chosen view. It would be interesting for him to weigh in on "lying for the Lord," and LDS apologists.

My view is just as possible as yours, and I believe more so given what people wrote about him that worked for him and did his research.

[_sock puppet]

Kish, how do you think Nibley helped and/or hurt Mormon scholarship overall? I would probably place him below Roberts and Talmage and above all of the FARMS/BYU crowd most active in Mopology.

That's an interesting question, Mak. I suppose I would come back with this: anything that moved people to obtain a broader education in the Humanities was probably an improvement over the historical amnesia of the LDS people. Simply by making people aware of the existence of a vast ocean of history, languages, cultures, etc., Nibley probably did something more valuable than Roberts or Talmage. Some of the value of Nibley's work may be the way that it highlights the profound ignorance of LDS culture. One may also see its value in its failure. Those who followed Nibley's bread crumbs and expected them to pan out were doomed to be disappointed. Yet, there is a way in which, I believe, the sensitive and reflective person can come to terms with what Nibley was trying to do, why it failed, and yet resonates with other forms of cultural appropriation and imperialism in the Western tradition.

I agree with that assessment.

I was turned off with the cult of personality around Nibley when I was at BYU in the late 1970s. I attended a few of his non-class lectures. I'd hear those around me express their amazement, but when I'd ask them what they thought he'd said, they'd just mutter something under their breaths and end that he's an LDS genius. Then in my second year as an undergraduate, I ran onto my first vocal detractor from the Nibley cult. He had three or four essays (not published) that exposed as dead ass wrong some of Nibley's assumed premises. I read them--wish I yet had copies--and was astounded. The author insisted that before he'd give me copies to read that he'd only do so if I promised to go look up the sources in the HBL Library. I did for about 1/2 of the sources of just one of the essays that I'd picked at random, and sure enough, the detractor was spot on. And thus, my enchantment with Nibley ended before it ever began.

After that, whenever I'd see an announcement for one of Nibley's lectures or happened to be passing by the venue while one was in progress, I'd just smirk as there would be so many nearly bowing around and in front him, hanging on every word that I suspected many did not understand.

[_Bret Ripley]

He is way to intelligent to not know his footends were all over the place.

Presumably this is why you never see photos of Nibley in his bare feet: he knew he had gnarly toes.

[_Markk]

Presumably this is why you never see photos of Nibley in his bare feet: he knew he had gnarly toes.

a closet hobbit I suppose?

[_honorentheos]

He is way to intelligent to not know his footends were all over the place.

Presumably this is why you never see photos of Nibley in his bare feet: he knew he had gnarly toes.

Bret Ripley, you need to post more often.

[_sock puppet]

He is way to intelligent to not know his footends were all over the place.

Presumably this is why you never see photos of Nibley in his bare feet: he knew he had gnarly toes.

Bret Ripley, you need to post more often.

I second that. Moved and seconded. All in favor say 'aye'.

[_Rosebud]

I don't see Martha Beck as someone who is marginalized and disempowered. Maybe by the insular and minuscule Mormon community (and within that by the very few who know who either she or her father are), but she has quite publicly left those saints, and she commands a far, far wider audience than her father ever had. More people have read her books and columns, seen her on Oprah, and attended her seminars online or in person than even know who the f*** Hugh Nibley was. The one thing her audience are likely to know about him, if they ever learn his name, is that he molested his daughter while wearing an alligator costume.

That's right. She's not disempowered right now. But, if there is any truth to what she writes, she was once very disempowered: a small child in the hands of those who hurt her for their own gain. Writing her book very well could have been one of the steps she took on the path to empowerment. Few victims have that kind of strength. They fall to the weight of fear of people calling them "sensational," "liars," excluding them from their communities (this probably happened to Beck as a result of her book) or marginalizing them in other ways if they find the courage to speak up for themselves or talk about what happened to them. Many disempowered people never make it as far as she did. Some die by suicide. Others sink into depression. Some find fulfillment without empowerment (I'd hope). And some disempowered people, like Beck, find the strength to fight for empowerment. A few achieve it. She did well.

As far as the rest of her career, I don't know anything about it. Don't really care to know either. I have no real opinion one way or another.

[_Rosebud]

In fact, it's probably because Beck is so intelligent and had other resilient qualities that she is empowered now despite her initial disempowerment. She is very fortunate to have the capacity she has. It's most often only the victims who have the most potential for finding empowerment that the public hears from. The rest fall victim to techniques their perps do to keep the story under wraps.

Here's one way to look it: People who commit crimes (or take other unethical actions that aren't considered criminal) against individuals and get away with them are very smart about how they take their actions. If they're smart, they're going to do what they can to not get caught. In order to not get caught, they're therefore going to do what they can to silence their victims. As a result, victims tend to have a lot of reasons to remain silent, one of which, at least, comes in the form of incentives from the person who is hurting them (usually in the form of, "if you say anything, I'll hurt you or someone you love even more"), but there are other ways of ensuring silence. One, and the one that is most pertinent to this conversation, is using social interactions and public opinion.

(Children -- like Beck was -- are the most vulnerable victims to perp techniques, of course. And children who are hurt deal with so many residual issues from the crimes that the silencing techniques used against them might take a back seat in comparison.)

In other words, it's pretty lame to criticize potential victims who find the courage to speak. Yet it happens all the time. And the fact that it happens compounds the incentives of other victims, and especially victims who may not have as much inherent capacity for empowerment (like Beck did), to remain silent. Each time a victim like Beck is criticized for speaking, the person doing the criticizing takes part in a shaming social dynamic that others witness. That public social dynamic shames the empowered victim for speaking and simultaneously (through the power of the fear of shame) further silences other less empowered victims who may be listening in the conversation (or reading it as in the case of a message board). The way to help disempowered people, in the cases like Nibley's, is to stop defending the perpetrator in the same conversations/words/posts that one criticizes the victim. This is true regardless of whether or not Nibley was a perp and Beck a victim. This is true because taking the action of defending the perp and criticizing the victim (regardless of accuracy) further silences victims who are reading.

If the victims who are reading will find their own empowerment, like Beck did, they'll be better off. I would hope that supporting other victims in finding empowerment is an objective of pretty much all the good people who post here.

Does Nibley's good name need defending from Beck? I don't know. I think he hurt his own good name and from where I sit, it's a lot more important to try to empower current victims than defend a dead guy who seems to have done a good job of empowering himself at others' expense during his lifetime even if what Beck said is hogwash. He didn't behave ethically and his work may very well have amplified the ridiculousness of the more recent versions of Mopology. How did that help anyone who followed in his footsteps? What a waste of time, energy, education, and money.

[_Symmachus]

I don't disagree with any of your general statements about victims qua victims and perpetrators qua perpretators, Rosebud, and I don't think that, if Nibley does need defending from these allegations, I'm the person for that. Nor are his foonotes the plane on which defense should be played out. But I don't see that case as having any relevance here, because I don't think this is where perpetrators should be dealt with either.

I am not going to assume that he was a child molester because one child claims so in a fictionalizing memoir, nor will I assume he isn't because the others say she is a nutso whose memories are inconsistent and lacking in corroboration with any of their memories. I did read her book and it certainly contained fabrications of its own (e.g. the claim that BYU professors are forced to listen to devotionals even in their offices or the claim that everybody in Provo knew who her father was as well as her, or the claim that the Nibleys were Mormon royalty...even in Idaho!), but that doesn't mean her basic story is false. I don't see what she has to gain from making such a bizarre story up (which also, incidentally, Nibley's basic defense of Joseph Smith). But in the end I simply don't know one way or the other and won't pretend to.

Lucky for my interest in the discussion, it doesn't matter. The point that Nibley's inaccurate footnotes are not at all unusual for scholars (as anyone who has ever worked in a scholarly journal in the pre-publication process will tell you), especially for one who was not publishing in scholarly venues with the controls and feedback that entails, does not hinge on whether he molested his child. Nor does it help the victims' or defenders' cases. His misreadings generally are in-text, and that is where engagement with Nibley as an advocate for an ancient Mormonism should occur, not his footnotes nor his relations with his daughter. That he may or may not have been a child molester is an ad hominem argument if we are talking about his footnotes: it might be true, might be false, but it's no reason to assume that someone is inventing sources whole-cloth. The probabilities in your mind for determining that are also irrelevant. There are many thousands of footnotes as a body evidence that can be used to substantiate his deception if it existed in the scholarly realm.

I don't see how asking for evidence that person X invented footnotes is necessarily defending or empowering person X in their alleged capacity as a child molester, and conversely I don't see how it disempowers their victims—unless you think that empowering a victim necessarily entails that perpetrators must be 100% awful, lying sacks of crap in every single capacity in which they exist. If Nibley were a lying sack of crap in his scholarship, it shouldn't be hard to detect. What is detectable is that he was a sloppy scholar driven by his obsession on Mormonism as the one true religion and that his published views on scholarship reveal a cynical nihilism about it that makes him indifferent to his own sophistry. That explains everything for me as regards his scholarship, whether or not he molested his daughter.

This reminds me of the case of a very good classicist who went to jail for attempts to seduce a minor. A recent book of his gets a one star rating on Amazon because, as the reviewer explains, he is a convicted sex criminal. That is true, but it has nothing to do with whether his commentary on Cicero is a good and useful commentary or not.

I don't know him but he is probably a terrible human being. On the other hand, I know some pretty amazing people who are awful scholars. One doesn't have much to do with the other.