MYTH DISPELLED: LDS Apologists Are Paid

[_antishock8]

http://farms.BYU.edu/viewauthor.php?authorID=1

Lesseeeee... I'm sure on Mr. Peterson's officially official Neal Maxwell Institute profile there will be mostly ME material... Because... You know... That's what he wants us to believe he primarily does...


Transcripts and Featured Publications

1 Nephi 1–7
Comparing LDS Beliefs with First-Century Christianity
Evidences of the Book of Mormon
On Alma 7:10 and the Birthplace of Jesus Christ
Other Voices from the Dust
The Keystone of Our Religion

Journal of Book of Mormon Studies

"Secret Combinations" Revisited
Nephi and His Asherah

Review of Books

Two Pahute Indian Legends: "Why the Grand Canyon Was Made" and "The Three Days of Darkness" (Volume 1 Issue 1)
A Modern Malleus maleficarum (Volume 3 Issue 1)
Afterword (Volume 11 Issue 2)
Authority in the Book of Mosiah (Volume 18 Issue 1)
Chattanooga Cheapshot, or The Gall of Bitterness (Volume 5 Issue 1)
Christ-Bearer (Volume 8 Issue 1)
Constancy amid Change (Volume 8 Issue 2)
David Whitmer Interviews: A Restoration Witness (Volume 5 Issue 1)
Decker's Complete Handbook on Mormonism (Volume 7 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction (Volume 3 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction (Volume 6 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: (Volume 16 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: (Volume 19 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: "The Worst Herricy Man Can Preach" (Volume 12 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: "What Has Athens to Do with Jerusalem?": Apostasy and Restoration in the Big Picture (Volume 12 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: American Apocrypha? (Volume 13 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: By What Measure Shall We Mete? (Volume 2 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: Doubting the Doubters (Volume 8 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Fictionary (Volume 10 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Historical Concreteness, or Speculative Abstraction? (Volume 14 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: In the Land of the Lotus-Eaters (Volume 10 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: Of "Galileo Events," Hype, and Suppression: Or, Abusing Science and its History (Volume 15 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Perceptions and Expectations (Volume 11 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: QnA (Volume 13 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Questions to Legal Answers (Volume 4 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: Reflections on the Reactions to Rough Stone Rolling and Related Matters (Volume 19 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: The Review Crosses a Divide of Its Own (Volume 11 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Through a Glass, Darkly (Volume 9 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction: Traditions of the Fathers (Volume 9 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction: Triptych (Inspired by Hieronymus Bosch) (Volume 8 Issue 1)
Editor's Introduction—Not So Easily Dismissed: Some Facts for Which Counterexplanations of the Book of Mormon Will Need to Account (Volume 17 Issue 2)
Editor's Introduction—The Witchcraft Paradigm: On Claims to (Volume 18 Issue 2)
Ein Heldenleben? On Thomas Stuart Ferguson as an Elias for Cultural Mormons (Volume 16 Issue 1)
Introduction (Volume 6 Issue 2)
Introduction (Volume 7 Issue 1)
Introduction (Volume 7 Issue 2)
Introduction (Volume 1 Issue 1)
Mormon in the Fiery Furnace Or, Loftes Tryk Goes to Cambridge (Volume 6 Issue 2)
Mormonism (Volume 8 Issue 1)
Mormonism as a Restoration (Volume 18 Issue 1)
Mormonism: The Prophet, the Book and the Cult. (Volume 2 Issue 1)
On the New World Archaeological Foundation (Volume 16 Issue 1)
Prolegomena to the DNA Articles (Volume 15 Issue 2)
Reflections on Secular Anti-Mormonism (Volume 17 Issue 2)
Skin Deep (Volume 9 Issue 2)
Stories from the Early Saints: Converted by the Book of Mormon (Volume 4 Issue 1)
Text and Context (Volume 6 Issue 1)
The Book of Mormon: First Nephi, The Doctrinal Foundation. (Volume 1 Issue 1)
The Evangelical Is Our Brother (Volume 11 Issue 2)
The Prophetic Book of Mormon (Volume 2 Issue 1)
What Certain Baptists Think They Know about the Restored Gospel (Volume 10 Issue 1)
Yet More Abuse of B. H. Roberts (Volume 9 Issue 1)

Insights

New Book Features Work of Poet, Theologian
New Translation Launches METI's Library of the Christian East Series
Reflections: Cosmic Optimism

Foreign Language

A Pedra Fundamental De Nossa Religião
Evidências Da Veracidade Do Livro De Mórmon (PET-T1)
Evidenze del Libro di Mormon
L'autorité dans le livre de Mosiah
Un érudit étudie les preuves du Livre de Mormon (PET-T1)
UN ERUDITO EXAMINA LAS EVIDENCIAS PARA EL LIBRO DE MORMÓN (PET-T1)

Books

Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon
Offenders for a Word

Book Chapters

"Secret Combinations"
And I Saw the Stars -- The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy
Can the 1834 Affidavits Attacking the Smith Family Be Trusted?
Economy and Technology
Introduction
Is Mormonism Christian? An Investigation of Definitions, part 1
Is Mormonism Christian? An Investigation of Definitions, part 2
Is Mormonism Christian? An Investigation of Definitions, part 3
Is the Book of Mormon True?: Notes on the Debate
Mormonism as "Cult": The Limits of Lexical Polemics
Nephi and His Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8–23
Not Joseph's, and Not Modern
Secret Combinations Revisited
The Throne Theophany/Prophetic Call of Muḥammad
Ye Are Gods: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind

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Pffffbbbt.... Phew... I'm just having the hardest time finding Suhrawardi's Philosophy of Illumination listed here. I mean... Whatever is an outside observer to think??

MI->BYU->Mopologetics->Mormon Church

THAT is the message the officially official profile sends to the world. THAT is Mr. Peterson's work, and his legacy. The Philosophy of Illumination... Not so much.

[Guest]

What a stunner! The only publications listed in the list of my Maxwell Institute publications are Maxwell Institute publications!

Incidentally, the book to my right in the photograph is al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falasifa, an eleventh-century Mesopotamian Mopologetic text that I edited for publication in English and Arabic. (The particular copy in the picture is a special leather-bound edition, sitting on the box in which it comes, that was prepared for VIPs.)

The volumes in my Middle Eastern Texts Initiative are distributed by the University of Chicago Press. You can easily verify this in their catalogue.

“What is needed for Islamic philosophy is something like the Loeb Library for Greek and Latin texts where the text in the original appears on one side of the page and the English translation on the opposite page. Fortunately during the last few years Brigham Young University has embarked upon such a series in which already a few important titles have appeared.” (Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the Land of Prophecy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 24.)

[Guest]

The simple fact is that the Church and its pursuits are funded by the contributions of members. That, by the way, was the ancient Christian practice.

Which, by the way, now that its been brought up, brings to the fore something that's kind of been in the background but should be made explicit. I want the Maxwell Institute to do apologetic work. I want them to refute, confound, and intellectually flummox people like Metcalfe, and Graham, and Quinn, and the Morlocks at Signature. I want them to do this.

While DCP and others may not be paid so that they will do this work, that fact that my financial support of the Church, and hence, BYU as an institution, gives them an organized institution from which to write and publish their work is just peachy keen with me.

I suspect that what the Morlocks really want is for organized, intellectually substantive apologetics to just go away.

[_Droopy]

I just see this as being very problematic, because apologetics is being done for the LDS Church, by members of the LDS Church,

Nothing the present Mars probe will likely discover could possibly be as noteworthy and world shaking as this. Scratch has discovered that Mormons do Mormon apologetics at their own expense.

The Pillars of Hercules tremble...

[_Droopy]

The wonder of his methodology never ceases to amaze, even after years. This particular maneuver reminds me of the old Far Side cartoon where the two scientists are contemplating a blackboard full of equations. In the middle of the equations occurs the phrase "Then a miracle happens," and, thereupon, the equations continue. "Could you," asks the one scientist of the other, "perhaps be a little bit more explicit about this step?"

In reference to Scratch, I'd prefer the one where the miners are seen fearfully observing a pair of devils looking very perturbed as flames lick the rocks behind them, that the miners have dug there way into...

Scratch must have very dirty fingernails.

[_Droopy]

How do you feel about doing it anonymously?

Yes. We all know that you disdain the anonymity of the Internet and those who embrace it. I mean, really, we all get it. Repeating it ad nauseam doesn't make your position any more relevant or persuasive. At this point, you're either preaching to the choir or you're annoying the heck out of the never-to-be-converted.

Perhaps, when you see a new poster has joined the board, you might email him or her with your position statement re: Internet anonymity. That way, the rest of us wouldn't have to read it over and over and over and over and over again.

If you think this is actually an effective rhetorical point, you're just blind to the dynamics and constituency of the board.

If you wish to be merely annoying while failing to score any discernible rhetorical victory whatsoever via your righteous disdain, then continue.

Generally, the first time I read, in any of your posts, "anonymous," "anonymite," "anonymously," etc., I scroll past it without a second glance: I know your position; I'm not particularly interested; and I have limited time. I doubt I'm alone.

I'm dropping in at this post merely to sound a plea for reason, Robert: I'd dare say that no regular poster on this board cares what you think about Internet anonymity--not even your fellow LDS. Your repetitious refrain functions merely as a roadblock to effective communication at this point.

Anonymity is simply not at issue in the vast, vast, vast majority of discussion topics here.

If you must continue in this regard, might it be via PM? That way, I have no excuse to skip your posts. And, frankly, I'd rather not have one. I enjoy reading what you have to say, generally.

Non-anonymously yours,

Chris

Interesting, because looking at salmon's profile, I see...nothing.

[_Droopy]

Wow. This is getting fairly personal. Would anybody like to inspect my journal, read my letters to my missionary son, study my contract, or tape-record my meetings with my department chairman?

Do you haf your paperz, Dr. Peterson?

[_Droopy]

Whatever gets you to sleep at night my friend...

Utterly, unimaginably, amazing.

[_Droopy]

I think this is an extremely problematic statement.

Scratch, do you really have a reading comprehension problem of such magnitude? What, precisely, is the problem here? How far can your mental and ethical deterioration actually go?

I believe Scratch verily does. For example:
http://mormondiscussions.com/discuss/vi ... 403#158403

Yes, its virtually pointless to discourse with him.

[Guest]

One more note regarding aftershock8's learned dismissal of my pathetic, purely Mopologetic legacy:

Pffffbbbt.... Phew... I'm just having the hardest time finding Suhrawardi's Philosophy of Illumination listed here.

He wasn't looking in the University of Chicago Press catalogue, I'm afraid.

I mean... Whatever is an outside observer to think??

MI->BYU->Mopologetics->Mormon Church

THAT is the message the officially official profile sends to the world. THAT is Mr. Peterson's work, and his legacy. The Philosophy of Illumination... Not so much.

Amusingly, Tzvi Langermann (of Bar-Ilan University, in Israel) just sent me, a few minutes ago, the following item. It's from The Medieval Review, and it concerns one of the volumes in the Collected Works of Moses Maimonides, a small series that I founded and for which I serve as overall editor -- though Gerrit Bos, of University College London and the Martin-Buber-Institut für Judaistik at the University of Cologne in Germany, is preparing critical editions of the Arabic texts and translating them for us.

Bos, Gerrit, ed. and trans. <i>Maimonides: Medical Aphorisms: Treatises 6-9: A parallel Arabic-English edition edited</i>. Brigham Young University Middle Eastern Texts Initiative - The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2007. Pp. 250. $39.95 (Hunter Biden). ISBN-13: 9780842526647, ISBN: 0842526641.

Reviewed by Tamás Visi
Kabinet Judaistiky, Olomouc, Czech Republic
visi.tamas@gmail.com


Moses Maimonides (1137 or 1138 [<i>not</i> 1135], Cordoba-1204, Fustat) was known by most of his contemporaries not only as a philosopher and jurist but also as a physician. Most of his medical works were written in the last period of his life, from 1191 to 1204, in Fustat, when healing became Maimonides' chief occupation. Unlike his philosophical and halakhic works which were intended solely to the Jewish readers, the medical writings reached a wider, non-Jewish public within the Arabic world. Most of the medical books were translated into Hebrew during the Middle Ages, some of them circulated in several different Hebrew versions, and many of them were translated into Latin as well.

Careful exegesis of the authoritative medical texts was an integral part of Maimonides' healing practice. In a private letter written around 1190 in Fustat Maimonides stated that he spent his evenings with studying what was pertinent to his cases in the medical literature. "For you know how long and difficult the medical art is for one who is faithful and precise and wishes to say nothing without knowing a proof of what he says and without knowing where the proof is stated and what the reasoning underlying is" (quoted in Davidson, <i>Moses Maimonides</i>, Oxford, 2005, 68).

The <i>Medical Aphorisms</i>, Maimonides' longest and most significant medical work, can be seen as a by-product of his medical practice. It is a handbook to facilitate finding "the proof" and "where the proof is stated" and "what the reasoning underlying is" in the medical literature, or more precisely, in the Galenic corpus as it was known to the Arabs. Referring to Tzvi Langermann's recent research the translator of this volume, Gerrit Bos, emphasizes that <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> is "nothing other than a notebook" and "it cannot be characterized as a medical equivalent of the <i>Mishneh Torah</i>," the latter being Maimonides' magnificent restatement of Jewish law ("Translator's Introduction," xvii).

By an "aphorism" a shorter or longer paragraph summarizing an observation, an argument, or a point is meant. Most of Maimonides' "aphorisms" are, in fact, taken from Galen's works: they are sometimes verbatim quotations, sometimes paraphrases or summaries of Galen's text or mixtures of all the three genres. They are indexed with a reference to the title and the chapter of that Galenic work from where the paragraph has been taken. The quotations or paraphrases are thematically arranged by Maimonides into twenty five "treatises." Thus a practising medieval physician could easily find the necessary information in Maimonides' compendium with a reference to the source in the Galenic corpus.

Although a Latin translation was printed as early as 1489, one of the medieval Hebrew translations was edited by Süssmann Muntner in 1959, and an English translation based on Muntner's edition by Fred Rosner was published in 1989 (<i>Maimonides' Medical Writings</i>, vol. 3, Haifa, 1989), the Arabic original has not been printed until the twenty-first century except for some short excerpts. This situation is addressed by a new project initiated at University College London to provide critical editions in the original Arabic together with English translations of Maimonides' medical works that are still in manuscript. The twenty-five treatises of <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> will be published in five volumes. The book under consideration now is the second volume containing treatises 6 to 9.

Readers of the Brigham Young University series of Arabic-English bilingual publications will not be disappointed by this volume. The Arabic text is established on the basis of two early manuscripts following principles clearly stated by the editor. The format of the book accords with the previous volumes of the series; thus, the readers familiar with the series will know where to find what. The "Translator's Introduction" is a brief and concise summary of the most relevant information about the work and its transmission including a description of the extant Arabic manuscripts. The critical apparatus offers a selection of variant readings considered most important by the editor. The footnotes provide further information especially concerning the history and meaning of the medical <i>termini technici</i> used by Maimonides. A separate supplement corrects the numerous mistakes of Mutner's Hebrew edition and Rosner's English translation--anybody who wants to use the aforementioned publications should consult these corrections.

Thus, the reader should not expect an in-depth study extending to hundreds of pages about the <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> as an "Introduction" nor a monstrous critical apparatus taking more space than the text itself on every page. What we do find is a user-friendly product which contains perhaps less than some scholars would like to see but conveys more information about the essentials and makes the results of this field of study accessible to the wider academic community of medievalists. You do not have to be able to read Arabic to find this book interesting. On the other hand, any student of the Arabic language who wants to extend his competence to the direction of medical literature will find this publication very useful.

Finally, to show the importance of the <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> for medieval studies in general I would like to indicate a context outside of the history of medieval medicine in which Maimonides' work fits in a very interesting way. The <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> can be described as a "book of memory" in the sense that Mary Carruthers has given to this phrase (cf. Carruthers, <i>The Book of Memory</i>, Cambridge, 1990, and <i>The Craft of Thought</i>, Cambridge, 1998).

When a medieval physician treated a patient he was supposed to recall a body of knowledge learnt from <i>books</i>. Therefore, healing was a situation in which the doctor's memory was tested. The explicit purpose of Maimonides' compendium was to prepare the physician for this test. As he writes in Treatise 7, aphorism 8 about preventing and healing syncope, which was of central concern for any healing strategy in his opinion, "since this affliction, namely syncope, is such a serious one and is a partner and associate of death, which it [often] precedes, a physician should have a comprehensive knowledge of all the causes of syncope <i>and should always keep them in mind</i>" (25; italics added). In the next paragraph Maimonides remarks: "I thought it a good thing to classify the [various] causes of syncope and to describe its classes and species so that it will be easy to learn them <i>and know them by heart</i>" (ibid; italics added).

These remarks clearly indicate that memorizing the content of medical books was a major consideration for Maimonides in composing the <i>Medical Aphorisms</i>. Writing a <i>florilegium</i> in which several texts taken from various sources were put together in a new order was a basic technique of <i>ad rem</i> memory in Latin culture (cf. Carruthers, <i>The Book of Memory</i>, 174-185). Although it is not unproblematic to apply the concepts of Latin Christendom to medieval Islamic civilization, the explanatory force of these concepts cannot be excluded <i>a priori</i> either. Perhaps, the <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> was Maimonides' own "book of memory" edited for the benefit of other physicians. Through this book we can have a glimpse of the intellectual work that occupied the mind of physicians in medieval Islamic societies.

In sum, <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> is a very important document of medieval intellectual history and a critical edition of the original Arabic has been a desideratum for a long time. Gerrit Bos' edition and English translation of Treatises 6-9 meets the highest standards of scholarship. Besides congratulating Gerrit Bos and his team for this wonderful achievement we are looking forward to the subsequent volumes of <i>Medical Aphorisms</i> together with other volumes promised by the editor.

The shame of having founded and directed publication of the Collected Medical Works of Moses Maimonides will, I suspect, be an indelible part of my pathetic, purely Mopologetic legacy.