Dan Peterson on book on Nibley

[hauslern]

A new book has come out Hugh Nibley Observed. Dan has a youtube interview "In this video, Dan Peterson, a BYU professor, an articulate and entertaining writer and lecturer on the faith, and president of the Interpreter Foundation recounts personal stories and descriptions of his experiences with Hugh Nibley over many years."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmthNNYFb_k

I think Nibley is becoming very dated. When he was writing and quoting scholars like William Albright on the historicity of the Old Testament there was no Israel Finkelstein (Israeli archaeologist - see The Bible Unearthed.) questioning the exodus and conquest.Nibley spent his work in the libraries while Finkelstein was out there digging. See recent interviews on Youtube with Finkelstein.

Gee and Kerry M will comment on his Book of Abraham writings. Nibley those years ago wrote me how there were LDS going and getting their PHds in the field of Egyptology. Ritner and Cooney have expressed concern over some of their writings on the Book of Abraham.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Well. I think Hugh “stolen valor” Nibley will continue to be pushed as a sort of untouchable intellectual giant, mainly because he’s unreadable, by an extraordinarily nasty blogger in a small corner of the Internet who’s commenters are comprised primarily of heretical Mormons more likely to believe in pet theories mingled with scripture than historical accuracy. Was there a timestamp you could point us to so we don’t waste 47 minutes listening to Mr. Peterson bloviate about nothing?

- Doc

[Symmachus]

A glance on Amazon preview shows that it's the usual hero worship, as if we should have expected anything else. It opens with yet another example of how disdainful Nibley was of the limelight—though, not so disdainful that he couldn't sit under a limelight and in front of a camera to tell you people who much he didn't want to be sitting in front of a camera under that limelight. Among his many languages was the Subtle dialect of Pride, and he spoke this language fluently whenever he made a big deal about how he didn't want to be made into a big deal. As I said some years ago on the old version of this place, with humility like that, who needs pride?

The rest looks like mostly old stuff from several years ago. I'm particularly curious to see if Zina Nibley's essay was recent. My impression from her Twitter feed is that she has left the Church as far behind as it can be left and that now lives with a girlfriend or something (it's hard to tell between her endless Tweeting about various loony left-wing conspiracies and fantasies). Can't imagine the Interpreter people getting this from her recently, but if so, I wonder how that conversation went.

[Tom]

Dr. Peterson talks about peer review of a set of articles submitted for Interpreter's blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmthNNYFb_k&t=39m30s. The articles, he says, employ Bayesian analysis.

[hauslern]

At the end of the interview Dan talk about some upcoming papers on the Interpreter on Bayesian analysis. They had sought the help of someone well qualified from Oxford. This must be something to do with what the Dale brothers had written on.

[Philo Sofee]

They better hope someone from Oxford who reviews the new upcoming paper had better be DAMN well qualified on Bayesian Analysis, because we have several people here who are, and they ain't takin slop laying down......

[Gadianton]

It opens with yet another example of how disdainful Nibley was of the limelight—though, not so disdainful that he couldn't sit under a limelight and in front of a camera to tell you people who much he didn't want to be sitting in front of a camera under that limelight. Among his many languages was the Subtle dialect of Pride, and he spoke this language fluently whenever he made a big deal about how he didn't want to be made into a big deal. As I said some years ago on the old version of this place, with humility like that, who needs pride?

I'd say that's a bullseye. Nibley renounced wealth because wealth was evil, but that was convenient since he liked to read and didn't care about money anyway. He said that the Law of Consecration demanded we share everything, except for personal items. In one iteration of this, he slipped, and to a comb and toothbrush, added books to the personal things that didn't need sharing. He quickly back-peddled and made a humorous comment about loaning out books and not getting them back (If I recall correctly). Under his version of the Law of Consecration, a person performs their duties on the land, does their church calling, and then studies the gospel, which for him was a fairly open-ended pursuit. In that world, pecuniary emulation would shift from cars to scholarly essays on Mormonism. It would shift from scholarly essays on Chemistry to scholarly essays on Mormonism. By default, he'd end up as the most important person in the world, since the only thing that would matter is gospel knowledge, and he had more of than than anybody else.

[Symmachus]

In that world, pecuniary emulation would shift from cars to scholarly essays on Mormonism. It would shift from scholarly essays on Chemistry to scholarly essays on Mormonism. By default, he'd end up as the most important person in the world, since the only thing that would matter is gospel knowledge, and he had more of than than anybody else.

Deliciously put.

I have never been puzzled by Mormon attitudes towards wealth, which I think differ from the "wealth gospel"-ism of the Joel Osteens and other smiling faces on the book covers at Wal-mart. But humility is a trait highly valued by Mormons (though it is often understood merely as a synonym for submissiveness to the Church leaders), and I have always been puzzled by their mixed-messages on humility. Mormons have no anxiety whatsoever about wealth whatsoever (except for non believing heretic progressives, who should be shunned from every ward house), which is why these exposes of Church finances every few years have no impact. Their attitude towards humility, though, is more complicated: they need not only to acquire it, display it, and even spend it; they also need to see it acquired, displayed, and spent by others. That kind of moral currency is hard to mint. Nibley is one example, but it's not hard to recover many memories of similar humility publicity. They do it with Church leaders every time the death of an old brings in a new one ("Elder/President so-and-so has accomplished X, Y, and Z like no one else on planet earth, but he's so humble about it" according to a new biography available at Deseret Book the minute a predecessor is put in the earth). I had a seminary teacher who claimed that his younger brother, some genius investor or something, was a millionaire with a Ferrari. The license plate was custom: "justacar." Oh my god, so humble! He could have bought a Honda or not paid the extra money for what is colloquially and rightly called a vanity plate, but no he needed to let us know, as my admiring seminary teacher taught me, that despite his great wealth, he was still a humble servant of the Lord, not of a slave to his wealth. I was confused rather than inspired.

[Tom]

As a lifelong Nibleyophile, I must confess I am very much enjoying the excellent series of blog posts at Interpreter extolling Brother Nibley's many virtues. However, I admit that I couldn't stop smiling and giggling after reading the following passage in one such post:

Outlined briefly below is the way in which Nibley embodied four important personal qualities. Rare qualities then and rare qualities today — but absolutely essential elements in the 72-hour spiritual survival kit for Latter-day Saints growing up in the world in which we now live.

1. He knew the difference between the “terrible questions” and the trivial questions. Such questions are terrible not in the sense they are bad questions but in the sense that they may strike terror in the hearts of those who lack answers. They are questions that can only be answered through revelation: “Will there be life after death? What is it like? … Where did I come from? Why am I here?”[1] Nibley contrasts these to the “trivial questions,” like the ones Nibley received from the notorious Mark Hofmann, a fellow prisoner at the Utah State Penitentiary. Writes Nibley:

You’d think the smart Mark Hofmann … would be able to come up with something better than three questions which “absolutely demolish Joseph Smith”: the Kinderhook Plates, no horse bones found in South America, and Adam-God — the old anti-Mormon chestnuts. …

You see how feeble the approaches of these attacks are, how irrelevant. What does any of this have to do with the eternities, with eternal life? What does any of this have to do with anything that interests me at all? There is only one question, the sole question for religion existing at all. Religion alone is supposed to answer it, and if religion can’t, then religion can’t do anything — let us forget religion. I don’t worry about tomorrow’s football scores; I don’t worry about all these questions concerning the nature of God. …

The real question, of course, is, Is this all there is? This is what everybody wants to know, the only question that bothers us.

Because Nibley could distinguish the terrible questions from the trivial questions, his life stayed centered on the things that mattered most.

[Philo Sofee]

Having just completed another essay, this one on Romans 5:1, I have to say, Nibley entirely missed the boat. For the very first time, I can see that clear as a bell. The issue and important thing has absolutely nothing with the egotistical is this all there is, and will ***I, ME*** be there? THE terrible question, the TERRIBLE question is, have I loved everyone I know and don't know, and have I shown it, unfeigned, not in order to impress anyone else with my own humble piety so I can get back to Heavenly Father, but... do I, and have I actually loved people today? *Especially* those who don't believe like me, think like me, agree with me, go to church, have the same sexual orientation or skin color like me, believe in God correctly as I do, smell like me, and those I truly do despise, hate, and mock. Because if Jesus was even close to be correct, on that singular principle, that one beam of focused light, ALL the law and the prophets hang. All else ain't worth spit.