From My Book, An Excerpt On Nibley and Baptism of Adam

[_moksha]

... who would be the angel of the Mormon nation, or the angel of Utah?

Moroni with his golden vuvuzela or Libido with his drawn sword.

[_Johannes]

No, I think it would have to be the sort of angel who wears a business suit....

[_Yahoo Bot]

I think to be an effective critic of Nibley on this particular topic you'd have to be able to read Greek mss. I don't think much of persons who challenge New Testament translations who can't read Greek.

The Apocalypse of Adam is a Coptic text.

Same point. I read neither Coptic nor Greek. I sure am not going to trust a backyard professor who reads neither.

[_sock puppet]

Thanks for the interesting conversation, Johannes. You are, as always, a gentleman and scholar. Thanks also for tolerating my opinionated posts on a topic outside of my area of expertise. I reserve the right to bluster while being totally wrong.

If you think that's fun, blustering while being totally right is a real trip.

[_sock puppet]

... who would be the angel of the Mormon nation, or the angel of Utah?

Moroni with his golden vuvuzela or Libido with his drawn sword.

The Angel Libido has been riding my ass since I was 11.

[_sock puppet]

No, I think it would have to be the sort of angel who wears a business suit....

Not the Angel Ben Franklin, obviously.

[_Philo Sofee]

Yahoo Bot
I think to be an effective critic of Nibley on this particular topic you'd have to be able to read Greek mss. I don't think much of persons who challenge New Testament translations who can't read Greek.

Kishkumen
The Apocalypse of Adam is a Coptic text.

Yahoo Bot
Same point. I read neither Coptic nor Greek. I sure am not going to trust a backyard professor who reads neither.

I wouldn't either. Even if he used lots of other scholars who DO know the languages, and have fundamentally proven track records, he is not to be trusted. Tested, yes, but trusted? NEVER!

[_Choyo Chagas]

Moroni with his golden vuvuzela

this?

[_Kishkumen]

Same point. I read neither Coptic nor Greek. I sure am not going to trust a backyard professor who reads neither.

No one here really cares about your judgment.

[_Symmachus]

This discussion really took some interesting turns. While I am still skeptical about seeing a turn from politics as itself political, that is obviously an interpretive question. I certainly think your view is more plausible now then when the discussion began, Kish, especially if we're talking more about the first century than, say, the fourth.

I think to be an effective critic of Nibley on this particular topic you'd have to be able to read Greek mss. I don't think much of persons who challenge New Testament translations who can't read Greek...

...I read neither Coptic nor Greek. I sure am not going to trust a backyard professor who reads neither.

The OP references scholars who read both and compares them. Nibley's claim about the Apocalypse of Adam is this:

The valuable Apocalypse of Adam claims to be taken from a book handed down from Adam himself, containing an exposition of the gospel of salvation but dwelling with particular emphasis on the baptism of Adam; this is particularly intriguing since the wonderfully condensed and powerful presentation of the gospel plan in the Joseph Smith book of Enoch devotes a whole page to the baptism of Adam. (See Moses 6:51–68.)

You don't need to read it in Coptic to know that this is not true. Baptism is mentioned only twice in the Apocalypse of Adam. And by the way, the Coptic word for "baptism" was borrowed from Greek (baptisma), so it's not like it's some convoluted circumlocution that requires a lot of thought from the translator and thus an understanding of the Coptic to test Nibley's characterization. You can read it for yourself in the translation of George MacRae (see here), who taught at Harvard and was an authority on the Nag Hammadi texts. Water imagery is frequent in this text, but it's not really about baptism, and in fact it actually undermines what Nibley is saying. By the time you get to the end of the text, this becomes apparent in the section that Philo quoted:

These are the revelations which Adam made known to Seth, his son, And his son taught his seed about them. This is the hidden knowledge of Adam, which he gave to Seth, which is the holy baptism of those who know the eternal knowledge through those born of the word and the imperishable illuminators, who came from the holy seed: Yesseus, Mazareus, Yessedekeus, the Living Water.

In other words, the real baptism is not with water but with this secret knowledge ("hidden knowledge...which is the holy baptism of those who know"). So, while Nibley is trying to make the point that ancient Christians believed in the literal baptism of Adam, as in the Pearl of Great Price (see, e.g. Moses 6.53), the text he references actually 1) says nothing at all about Adam's baptism and 2) denies the importance of literal baptism in general, contradicting the sermon on baptism given to Adam in the Book of Moses that Nibley is discussing.