MYTH DISPELLED: LDS Apologists Are Paid

[_Droopy]

Shock, could you pull yourself away from Jackass long enough to read this material? I can hardly wait for your shrewed rebuttal.

[_Trevor]

Do you have any actual reason to suppose that the department, college, or university rank advancement committees and the department chairman, college dean, and vice presidents who considered my petition for continuing status determined that my apologetic work "met" any of their "expectations"? If you do, they must have communicated more to you on that subject than they have ever communicated to me.

This does not appear to be a response to what you are quoting. Maybe you need to reread my statement.

All I know is that I included some Mormon-related work (not necessarily the same thing as Mormon apologetics, by the way) with the materials accompanying my petition for continuing status, and that I was granted continuing status. For all I really definitively know, those committees approved my petition despite my Mormon-related work, or in perfect indifference to it.

The real issue is your decision to include your work as the editor of the FARMS Review as part of your "citizenship" in the BYU academic community in your dossier. Your suggestion that some may have been indifferent or unfavorable toward it is nothing more than an empty speculation. What matters is that you included it, and that your were granted continuing status.

Do you think that my having served, at the time, as a counselor in a bishopric "met" their "expectations" too? Would I have been granted continuing status had I only been a primary teacher or a Scout leader? Or if I had listed no Church callings at all? How do non-Mormons on the faculty meet the seeming expectation that they serve in bishoprics?

You and I both know that the expectation is that you serve when you are called to serve, not that you serve in a bishopric vs. as a primary teacher. We also both know that the terms of your employment are different from the ones those who are not LDS work under. I think it is also clear that you are more likely to construct a dossier that you would imagine to be acceptable to the university than not. Your choice to include callings and your work for FARMS was likely made with that in mind.

It must be noted that "the LDS Church" didn't grant me continuing status. The University did. Not, actually, a small distinction.

Ultimately the Board is the body that makes final decisions. The leadership on the board is drawn from the leadership of the LDS Church. So, who, in the final analysis, is the decision-making body at BYU? The leadership of the LDS Church.

There seems to me quite a distance between the proposition that "The Church pays Dr. Peterson to be a Mopologist" and the proposition that "The University, by granting Dr. Peterson continuing status, has provided its approval of the way Dr. Peterson conducts himself as a scholar, teacher, administrator, and citizen of the university. Part of that citizenship, evidently, is apologetic work."

The latter proposition is demonstrably true. The former, though inadequately supported by the evidence, will be more popular among certain conspiracy theorists.

I agree. In the former, the LDS Church is getting a pretty raw deal. Perhaps they should have denied you continuing status based on the fact that you have devoted so much time to apologetics. Or maybe not. You may be such a valuable teacher and administrator that it balances out in their favor. Still, I have always looked at much of what you do as an apologist as a liability to the LDS Church instead of a benefit. No offense intended. I only hope that Daniel Peterson the scholar, teacher, and administrator is a much better version than the persona you present here. I hope the same for myself.

Anyhow, you have conceded that apologetic work is a component of your career at BYU. I have no interest in pressing the idea that the LDS Church pays you to do "Mopologetics" because such a statement implies that your sole or even primary purpose for being at BYU is precisely that. I reject the former and hope the latter simply is not true.

[_Daniel Peterson]

The real issue is your decision to include your work as the editor of the FARMS Review as part of your "citizenship" in the BYU academic community in your dossier.

Obviously, I think it a good thing, and a valid use of my time -- though plainly not, contrary to poor antishock8, as a substitute for research and writing and editing that is unrelated to Mormonism. My belief that it is a good thing and a valid use of my time is what led me, at some personal financial cost, to resist one administrator's pressure to cease and desist.

But the mere conjoined facts that (a) I included some of my apologetic activities under my "Citizenship" report and that (b) I received continuing status leave underdetermined the answer to the question of whether I received continuing status because of those reported activities, regardless of those activities, or despite those activities. That, overall, the various committees and administrators "approved" of the way I've been doing my job doesn't clearly say that they approved of that particular aspect of my efforts. And approval, in such a case, could mean anything from being positively enthusiastic about it to regarding it as a non-deal-breaker.

Your suggestion that some may have been indifferent or unfavorable toward it is nothing more than an empty speculation. What matters is that you included it, and that your were granted continuing status.

Suggesting that they may have really liked it is, equally, empty speculation. That's my point. Unless you know more about my specific case in that respect than I do, you have no basis on which to reach a verdict.

You and I both know that the expectation is that you serve when you are called to serve, not that you serve in a bishopric vs. as a primary teacher. We also both know that the terms of your employment are different from the ones those who are not LDS work under. I think it is also clear that you are more likely to construct a dossier that you would imagine to be acceptable to the university than not. Your choice to include callings and your work for FARMS was likely made with that in mind.

Yes, we both understand that colleges and universities expect certain levels of contribution to their communities, and that BYU's expectations are different from Princeton's or UCLA's. But we probably also both understand that, if it would be absurd to suggest that I am paid at BYU for my "citizenship" as a Gospel Doctrine teacher or a bishop, there is no clearly superior reason to suggest that I'm paid at BYU for my "citizenship" as an apologist. The University simply wants to know that its faculty are contributing to the University and its community (or communities) -- I include Education Week lectures under "citizenship," too -- beyond the essential but relatively narrow spheres of teaching and publication. So faculty members typically cite, under "citizenship," their service on University committees, on school boards, in the Church, as officers of scholarly organizations, on thesis committees, as public lecturers, and the like.

It must be noted that "the LDS Church" didn't grant me continuing status. The University did. Not, actually, a small distinction.

Ultimately the Board is the body that makes final decisions. The leadership on the board is drawn from the leadership of the LDS Church. So, who, in the final analysis, is the decision-making body at BYU? The leadership of the LDS Church.

That's a remarkably distant ultimately. You can't seriously imagine that Gordon B. Hinckley, Boyd K. Packer, and Henry Eyring devoted quality time to poring over my rank advancement portfolio or deciding precisely where to peg my salary as contrasted with the salaries of my colleagues Dr. X, Dr. Y. and Dr. Z.

I have always looked at much of what you do as an apologist as a liability to the LDS Church instead of a benefit. No offense intended. I only hope that Daniel Peterson the scholar, teacher, and administrator is a much better version than the persona you present here. I hope the same for myself.

No offense taken. Plainly, I think you're mistaken and misguided. Rather than an expression of your personal taste, of course, it would be more interesting to see you engage actual evidence and argument. I don't know how much of my writing you've read, anyway, and I'm certainly not an admirer of the course you've chosen.

[_cksalmon]

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

And I doubt you'll ever see more there. But, that's rather beside the point.

[_antishock8]

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.

Why do I have the impression Mr. Peterson is running around in circles waving his arms around screaming, "I'm a real academic! I'm a real academic! See? See?? *harumph*"

All I know is you're not an employee of the University of Chicago. I do know that you're an employee of the Mormon church, vis a vis BYU. All I know is when I go to your officially official profile, at BYU, I see what's important to them. What's important to them, apparently, is your apologetic work because THAT is what's listed in detail.

Funny thing for a ME professor...

Regardless, I think's wonderful you're an academic, and that you're doing work in a field that you enjoy... Whatever field that may be any given day...

[_Daniel Peterson]

Why do I have the impression Mr. Peterson is running around in circles waving his arms around screaming, "I'm a real academic! I'm a real academic! See? See?? *harumph*"

That, I think, is a question for your therapist.

All I know is you're not an employee of the University of Chicago. I do know that you're an employee of the Mormon church, vis a vis BYU. All I know is when I go to your officially official profile, at BYU, I see what's important to them. What's important to them, apparently, is your apologetic work because THAT is what's listed in detail.

Funny thing for a ME professor...

Plainly, you haven't noticed (or are pretending not to have noticed) my post toward the bottom of the previous page, which already dealt with your, um, point:

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.)

To save you further research time, permit me to share with you some other discoveries to which your sleuthing would eventually lead:

The only articles listed on lists of my articles for the FARMS Review are (drum roll) articles in the FARMS Review!

A list of my foreign-language articles reveals only articles in foreign languages!

If my "Editor's Introductions" for the FARMS Review were compiled into a list, that list would contain only "Editor's Introductions" written for the FARMS Review!

If a man went net-fishing in the ocean with a 12" mesh net, he would catch only fish longer than 12"!

[_cksalmon]

If a man went net-fishing in the ocean with a 12" mesh net, he would catch only fish longer than 12"!

At last! The apologetic mindset revealed!

(The Marlin is Far, Far Greater than the Fishing Net.)

Chris

[Guest]

Ok. You're a professor employed by BYU, right? Just have to make sure... Let's babystep through this together:

www.BYU.edu takes me to this url: http://www.BYU.edu/webapp/home/index.jsp

At the BYU homepage I click on the search engine and type: "Daniel Peterson" which links to this url: http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u ... 20Peterson

I click on the top link which takes me to this url: http://farms.BYU.edu/viewauthor.php?authorID=1

And we're back to the point I've now made at least two times:

All I know is when I go to your officially official profile, at BYU, I see what's important to them. What's important to them, apparently, is your apologetic work because THAT is what's listed in detail.

Funny thing for a ME professor...

Look. If you're uncomfortable with the fact that your profile, at YOUR academic institution, owned and managed by YOUR church, presents YOU to the world as an apologist then that's something you need to discuss with them. Frankly, I'm starting to wonder from your posts on this thread if BYU's investment is a wise one. Why in the world would that institution want one of their 'esteemed' professors rooting around with the proletariat is beyond me...

[_antishock8]

If a man went net-fishing in the ocean with a 12" mesh net, he would catch only fish longer than 12"!

At last! The apologetic mindset revealed!

(The Marlin is Far, Far Greater than the Fishing Net.)

Chris

For a professor who is clearly an intellectual giant, you may want to re-think your stance on fishing for ocean-dwelling fish that are longer than 12".

[_Daniel Peterson]

Returning triumphantly from the waves with his 12"-mesh net and a lot of fish, antishock8 announces to the scientists assembled on the pier that there are no fish in the ocean shorter than 12".

Ok. You're a professor employed by BYU, right? Just have to make sure... Let's babystep through this together:

www.BYU.edu takes me to this url: http://www.BYU.edu/webapp/home/index.jsp

At the BYU homepage I click on the search engine and type: "Daniel Peterson" which links to this url: http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u ... 20Peterson

I click on the top linked which takes me to this url: http://farms.BYU.edu/viewauthor.php?authorID=1

Read that last URL, poor fellow. Notice that it takes you to a list of FARMS or Maxwell Institute publications.

I haven't bothered to put my full CV up at BYU. One of these days I will. (It's entirely up to me, both as to when and as to whether.) If I had put up my CV, there would be a link to my CV. As it is, there isn't, because I haven't.

But it shouldn't be hard, even for an antishock8, to grasp the elementary fact that a list of links to FARMS or Maxwell Institute publications -- put up by the Maxwell Institute, not by the University as a whole nor by my academic department nor by me -- is going to be a list of links to FARMS or Maxwell Institute publications and not a list of links to publications not published by FARMS or the Maxwell Institute.

You yourself know full well that that's not a complete list of my publications. Reflect for just a moment, if you can. You claim to have read, and you claim that you despise, my 2007 biography of Muhammad. Does that low and disreputable book show up on the list of FARMS or Maxwell Institute publications?

Hint: No. It doesn't. Why? Because my Muhammad biography isn't a FARMS or Maxwell Institute publication!

D'oh!

And we're back to the point I've now made at least two times:

And my embarrassment for you continues to mount.

All I know is when I go to your officially official profile, at BYU, I see what's important to them. What's important to them, apparently, is your apologetic work because THAT is what's listed in detail.

Because that's what the list is a list of!

Funny thing for a ME professor...

I would expect that just about anybody who reads this exchange is going to find it funny.

Look. If you're uncomfortable with the fact that your profile, at YOUR academic institution, owned and managed by YOUR church, presents YOU to the world as an apologist then that's something you need to discuss with them.

Why on earth would I be uncomfortable with the fact that a list of my apologetic work represents me as having written apologetic work? (Actually, not even all of the stuff on this list, poor fellow, is "apologetic" in character. As you could easily learn, if you cared to.)

Frankly, I'm starting to wonder from your posts on this thread if BYU's investment is a wise one. Why in the world would that institution want one of their 'esteemed' professors rooting around with the proletariat is beyond me...

Perhaps I can cite my amateur attempts at therapy as citizenship?