Weeping for FARMS

[Guest]

Although it passed unnoticed by most of the world, yesterday marked the third anniversary of the "banishment" of classic-FARMS scholars from the Maxwell Institute. At least, that is how the event is remembered by the classic-FARMS scholars themselves. And remember they did. Both Professor William Hamblin and also Professor Daniel Peterson remembered the day on their blogs. I present links to their posts to you for your consideration.

William Hamblin, "In Memoriam."
William Hamblin, "No Apology Necessary."
Daniel Peterson, "Deliverance Day."

I have to confess that I completely forgot to mark the date on my calendar. Those were, to put it mildly, wild times indeed. While I did forget the date, I will never forget how shocking it was to see Gerald Bradford's email to Dr. Peterson regarding the latter's removal from his position as editor of the Review and Dr. Peterson's leaked email to Gerald Bradford. Both were published right here on MDB by my esteemed colleague Doctor Scratch. I spent hours on the phone talking to Don Bradley about this development. In a way, it felt like watching a malignant growth born of the worst part of Hugh Nibley's legacy being excised from the body of the Brigham Young University.

So, on the whole, I was happy to see classic FARMS leave the Maxwell Institute but primarily because its members were intractable on the issue of attacking other members of the LDS Church in some truly ugly "reviews." That said, there were real gems in the classic-FARMS oeuvre. Among them I include Dr. Midgley's writing on Hugh Nibley and Dr. Peterson's "Nephi and his Asherah." So, it is not as though something good was not lost in the transition.

It seems to me, however, that we should celebrate the birth of the Interpreter as we mourn the losses that occurred when classic FARMS was ejected from the Maxwell Institute. Much of what classic-FARMS scholars were doing in the Maxwell Institute continues in the Interpreter, whose many achievements Dr. Peterson notes and celebrates on a regular basis. Interestingly, Dr. Hamblin pines for a new King Cyrus who will allow the classic-FARMS crew to return to the Promised Land of BYU. Personally, I think he has it all wrong. Clearly Father Lehi has led his people to a New Promised Land in the Interpreter, where classic-FARMS scholarship can flourish without the contention and backbiting of the naysayers and bureaucrats at BYU.

[_Kishkumen]

I will always be grateful to FARMS for the role it played in publishing the work of Hugh Nibley, one of my old professors at BYU. Hugh Nibley's inspiration changed the course of my life. I will forever be grateful to Dr. Nibley and to FARMS.

[_Maksutov]

Although it passed unnoticed by most of the world, yesterday marked the third anniversary of the "banishment" of classic-FARMS scholars from the Maxwell Institute. At least, that is how the event is remembered by the classic-FARMS scholars themselves. And remember they did. Both Professor William Hamblin and also Professor Daniel Peterson remembered the day on their blogs. I present links to their posts to you for your consideration.

William Hamblin, "In Memoriam."
William Hamblin, "No Apology Necessary."
Daniel Peterson, "Deliverance Day."

I have to confess that I completely forgot to mark the date on my calendar. Those were, to put it mildly, wild times indeed. While I did forget the date, I will never forget how shocking it was to see Gerald Bradford's email to Dr. Peterson regarding the latter's removal from his position as editor of the Review and Dr. Peterson's leaked email to Gerald Bradford. Both were published right here on MDB by my esteemed colleague Doctor Scratch. I spent hours on the phone talking to Don Bradley about this development. In a way, it felt like watching a malignant growth born of the worst part of Hugh Nibley's legacy being excised from the body of the Brigham Young University.

So, on the whole, I was happy to see classic FARMS leave the Maxwell Institute but primarily because its members were intractable on the issue of attacking other members of the LDS Church in some truly ugly "reviews." That said, there were real gems in the classic-FARMS oeuvre. Among them I include Dr. Midgley's writing on Hugh Nibley and Dr. Peterson's "Nephi and his Asherah." So, it is not as though something good was lost in the transition.

It seems to me, however, that we should celebrate the birth of the Interpreter as we mourn the losses that occurred when classic FARMS was ejected from the Maxwell Institute. Much of what classic-FARMS scholars were doing in the Maxwell Institute continues in the Interpreter, whose many achievements Dr. Peterson notes and celebrates on a regular basis. Interestingly, Dr. Hamblin pines for a new King Cyrus who will allow the classic-FARMS crew to return to the Promised Land of BYU. Personally, I think he has it all wrong. Clearly Father Lehi has led his people to a New Promised Land in the Interpreter, where classic-FARMS scholarship can flourish without the contention and backbiting of the naysayers and bureaucrats at BYU.

So touching to witness the valiant, battle scarred, selfless and devoted old warriors of the keyboard. They were soldiers once, and young. We almost feel compelled to stretch metaphors and historical references to endow them with something like honor or glory.

Nahhhhhh...............

[_Doctor Scratch]

Huh. Well, perhaps this merits more of a "commemoration" on our part, eh, Reverend? I, for one, honored the occasion by re-reading those infamous emails. I was struck once again by the phrase, "No uncontested slam-dunks." I was also struck by your observations (or opinions, perhaps?) concerning the effectiveness / "success" of Mormon Interpreter. It seems to me that Mormon Interpreter is far more watered-down than the Review was in its heyday. Not all that long ago, I posted a thread on DCP's review of Richard Mouw's Mormon-related work, and as I noted, this was far, far friendly towards non-LDS viewpoints than what we might have seen in the past. I tend to agree with you that this modulation in tone is largely a good thing. (Even the response to Jeremy Runnels's "Letter to a CES Director" was far milder--far more lukewarm than what we might have gotten prior to 2012.)

Still, Bill Hamblin is wailing away over on "Enigmatic Mirror" about the lack of apologetics (he actually means Mopologetics, by the way) from the "new" MI, and I see that he's now embarking on a multi-post "critique" of the Jenkins items on the BoM--including a rather lengthy bit where he argues that Jenkins is "unqualified" to discuss the historical dimensions of the Book of Mormon. ("Now my critics will no doubt whine that I am making an ad hominem attack against Jenkins, and am insulting him. I am not," Hamblin writes.) Now, *this* is much more in keeping with the spirt of classic-FARMS--and it's something which I tend to think has been absent from Mormon Interpreter. I can't help but wonder if Hamblin's retirement has left him feeling a bit "freer" in this regard. It may be that some of the other Powers-that-Be at Mormon Interpreter still feel they are on a somewhat tighter leash as long as they're still connected to BYU. It could be, too, that there was still some lingering hope re: the "King Cyrus" remark, and hence they've been trying really hard to be on their best behavior.

Something else Hamblin writes is worth noting:

I am planning to write a series of responses to Jenkins’ attacks on the Book of Mormon. I said I wasn’t going to in order to goad the Maxwell Institute at bit. Classic FARMS would have organized a systematic response to Jenkins. The “New” Maxwell Institute will not. Enough said.

Classic FARMS would have organized a systematic response. Huh. As I recall, when they were asked about the seemingly excessive responses to Grant Palmer and others, critics were told something to the effect of, "Well, I can't control what people write!"--as if a number of the FARMS people just "happened" to write vicious critiques of Palmer, and, hey, whaddya know? they're all just perfect for the Review! Instead, Hamblin is here describing a far more calculated programme ("systematic") that was aimed at discrediting LDS critics.

[_Kishkumen]

I was also struck by your observations (or opinions, perhaps?) concerning the effectiveness / "success" of Mormon Interpreter. It seems to me that Mormon Interpreter is far more watered-down than the Review was in its heyday. Not all that long ago, I posted a thread on DCP's review of Richard Mouw's Mormon-related work, and as I noted, this was far, far friendly towards non-LDS viewpoints than what we might have seen in the past. I tend to agree with you that this modulation in tone is largely a good thing. (Even the response to Jeremy Runnels's "Letter to a CES Director" was far milder--far more lukewarm than what we might have gotten prior to 2012.)

Your unequalled expertise and sharp eye impress me, Doctor. You aren't the B.H. Roberts Chair of Mopologetic Studies for nothing. It is a well earned appointment indeed. Yes, you are correct. And, of course, this suggests that there has been pressure from up the food chain to knock off some of the egregious attack-style apologetics. I think you may be right that it is coming from the university, although I suppose it could come from loftier ranks still.

Something else Hamblin writes is worth noting:

I am planning to write a series of responses to Jenkins’ attacks on the Book of Mormon. I said I wasn’t going to in order to goad the Maxwell Institute at bit. Classic FARMS would have organized a systematic response to Jenkins. The “New” Maxwell Institute will not. Enough said.

Classic FARMS would have organized a systematic response. Huh. As I recall, when they were asked about the seemingly excessive responses to Grant Palmer and others, critics were told something to the effect of, "Well, I can't control what people write!"--as if a number of the FARMS people just "happened" to write vicious critiques of Palmer, and, hey, whaddya know? they're all just perfect for the Review! Instead, Hamblin is here describing a far more calculated programme ("systematic") that was aimed at discrediting LDS critics.

One thing I have always appreciated about Professor Hamblin is that he is much less guarded than others when it comes to his reminiscences about the operations of classic FARMS. He and Lou have been most helpful in confirming what we had long suspected about many things, but Dr. Peterson had vociferously denied or "nuanced" in arguably misleading ways. Good catch, Doctor. We now see, straight from the keyboard of a key Mopologist, that the dog-piles of attack reviews were coordinated efforts. It was not the case, after all, that the editor had to beat off anxious would-be contributors with a stick; no, that stick was beating the bushes to flush out every faithful Mormon with a PhD to write an unfavorable review of the targeted publication or, more accurately, person.

[_Arrakis]

Do those two clowns ever stop whining?

[_Symmachus]

I have only mixed feelings about Nibley, but undiluted satisfaction in witnessing the twilight of the FARMSians. On the one hand, I could not stand the Nibley-olatry of the baby-boom generation. Nibley died just before my time in Classics at BYU, so I never met him, but his personality cult was persistent still.

There were small things: like the code to the ancient studies reading room, or the fact that that when that reading room became the Nibley Library, the shelves that held the Patrologiae and OCTs suddenly were matched, on the walls of that tiny room, by shelves stocked with Nibley's personal library, which contained not just ancient texts but hundreds of paperbacks on everything from cheap science fiction to WWII memoirs to popular science. These books served absolutely no intellectual purpose for scholars working on antiquity, yet here they were, talismans by which initiates into the Nibley mysteries could encounter the tangible presence of the Nibley numen in his very shrine.

Then there were larger issues: an entire university course devoted to Nibley, taught by his personal friend whose one qualification to teach a university course seemed to be his exuberant admiration for Nibley. The aim of this course was to cultivate hagiographic wonder for the Mormon academic Elvis. And one faculty member, a Harvard-trained Hellenist who later left BYU for browner pastures, was not exactly treated with respect when he called into the question the value of such a course. Thankfully, most of the younger faculty in Classics were more devoted to their field than to this personality cult, but there was one senior faculty member who could make your life in his classes unpleasant if you failed to reverence the genius of the place (e.g. in a class on early christian history, we read a few essays by Nibley, although some of it was crank-level nonsense that left me with the impression at the time that Nibley may have missed out on a promising career selling pencils from a cup. When I pointed out the utter absurdity of one of his arguments I was met with a completely unexpected animosity, a personal animosity that remained even in other classes from this faculty member that did not seem to have anything to do with Mormonism or early Christianity, however much he wanted to make everything about Mormonism and early Christianity, and to him those were the same thing). I know I was not the only one who encountered this.

As I say, I never knew him, so it's hard for me to judge how much he fostered this personality cult, but it is hard not to see a certain degree of cooperation on Nibley's part, and one friend of mine who is a disillusioned ex-admirer goes so far as to call him a charlatan (not my view). Despite the frequent assertions of his humble modesty in Boyd Peterson's biography, if you don't want a lot of attention, it's not that hard to tell your son to stop following you around with his film crew while you're trying to mumble to yourself about Egyptian religious rites, or to tell your son-in-law to wait until your dead to publish a fawning biography. Or you could just point out, when everyone swoons over how many languages are in your esoteric footnotes, that most scholars working in antiquity or biblical studies or classical philology have to learn lots of languages as part of their training in the same way that physicists have to learn lots of math or lawyers lots of legal stuff, and that most footnotes will have at least French, German, Greek, and Latin, and usually others, so it's not really that unusual or necessarily a marker of brilliance, much less the soundness of an argument. And the gem in the humility crown has to be the inclusion in that biography of a photo of Nibley's house as evidence for just how humble he lived—or rather was still living. With modesty that excessive, who needs pride?

The environment he helped create there for students interested in antiquity, whether classical philology or ancient near eastern history or biblical studies (however you can do that at BYU), was not a friendly one for those uninterested in LDS apologetics. In my first semester at BYU there was a panel called, "So, you want to study antiquity?" or something like that, for students curious about antiquity. Let me emphasize that the audience was intellectually curious students looking to "experts" for guidance about studying antiquity, and what kind of careers that might translate into. The panel was a couple of people from the College of Religion, Noel Reynolds (from political science!?), and only one member of the Classics faculty, despite the fact that Classics was the closest thing BYU had to a department specializing in antiquity, and that faculty member, the Hellenist from Harvard, was the most junior (it was his first semester too). This was my very first exposure to FARMSianism and the world of Mormon apologetics, and the very first time I had ever heard the name Nibley. The panel had a consensus early on which they maintained even in the Q & A: the only point of studying this crap (my word) was for gospel purposes, and unfortunately, "we baby-boomers already have all those jobs" (Noel Reynolds hit this point repeatedly), "so maybe you should major in engineering" (that's the gist). The one exception was the Classics faculty member, who pointed out that, actually, Mormon apologetics is about 0.000000000000001 % of the field, if it was even part of antique studies at all (clearly not, he wanted to say), and besides you can major in Classics and still go to law school or business school (cue silence from the rest of the panel, matched in intensity by the confusion of the student audience).

There's a lot more I could whine about, but it basically comes down to this, from my perspective as a student there: if you didn't join the apologist club, almost no one was that interested in you. And those who were interested were already marginalized. I don't think this was out of any maliciousness (except maybe in the case of the one older faculty member in Classics) as much as it was from a complacency and indifference to the larger world, an indifference bred by decades of a bias towards apologetics. Nibley surely deserves a large share of the credit for that bias.

But I say mixed feelings, though, because, on the other hand, after having read most of what he was written, it is clear to me that Nibleyism provided a method by which one could be intellectually curious without guilt. That is not an insignificant thing in the money-obsessed culture of Utah Mormonism. And as I've said before, at least Nibley produced something you could engage with; at least it was an ethos. The baby-boomer FARMSians had all the hard work of building that ethos done for them by Nibley. Their task was simply to reap the rewards of applying his methodology in a safe environment where the usual pressures of academic employment were light. We saw what lay at their intellectual core when that methodology spent itself: bitter and nihilistic "reviews" that tore down the work of others without putting a new edifice in its place. We see too how shocked the baby-boomer FARMSians can be when the the normal pressures of academic life are applied to them (that is basically what the fallout with the Maxwell Institute is).

At this point, what I like in Nibley outweighs what I don't like, because most of what I dislike about Nibley can be explained in terms of his scholarly generation (his approach to texts), which was essentially the tail end of late 19th century positivism (he got his PhD in the late 1930s for Christ's sake), and he is most interesting when he reacts against that positivism, even if that reaction is motivated by an apologetic interest. But the generation of worshipful groupies that took up his torch in the late 70s-early 2000s added nothing new, nothing relevant, and nothing constructive. Their ethos was essentially protective towards Nibley and destructive towards everyone else. In elevating Nibley to the status of a cult figure (perhaps with his passive collusion?), they built a hedge of quasi-religious awe around his approach to Mormon scripture, a hedge that created a new kind of Pharisaic conformity and a culture where deviation from Nibleyite orthodoxy was at best marginalized and at worst attacked on a very personal level. It's one thing to have deep respect old approaches and old ideas, but it's quite another thing to worship them because you don't have any new ones of your own, especially when you attack others for working on new ideas.

No, I think the FARMSians helped to set Mormon intellectual culture back, and I see little to lament in their demise.

[_Kishkumen]

Greetings, Symmachus:

I don't know quite how to thank you for your reminiscence of your time in Classics at BYU. I hope that it was not all as dreary as it sounds. Your experience of the place was, needless to say, quite different from my own. At the same time, I have no doubt that what you are saying is accurate, and I dearly wish that things had not turned out as they did.

I took two courses from Nibley, which I quite enjoyed, although they were also rather unusual experiences on the whole. Now, I loved these classes, but they did not seem to have much of a point really. You basically went to listen to Nibley rattle off whatever flowed out of his mind that particular day. I had read much of his work before I took the courses, so that helped anchor me somewhat.

When Nibley was alive and still teaching, there was a lot less of the veneration you describe. At least, I did not take notice of the excessive veneration you refer to. What struck me was instead the intellectual pushback from various faculty members. I recall hearing and reading very negative comments about Nibley from Stephen Robinson and Kent Jackson. The Classics faculty and most of the students had almost zero interest in apologetics at the time. A couple of friends in my Classics courses did plan to attempt a career at BYU's Religion department, but we did not spend a great deal of time talking about Nibley.

Although I had already moved on to my PhD program when you were at BYU, I recognize the Classics faculty whom you refer to. The young Harvard Hellenist was hired while I was away. My impression of him was that he was rather unhappy at BYU. I was of two minds when I heard he had taken other employment. I was sad for the Classics section but glad for him. I figured if my impression of him were at all accurate, he must have been quite uncomfortable there and eager to leave. The older faculty member is a person whom I owe a great deal, but whom I also understand to be a troubled soul in many different ways.

To place a different perspective on things, this faculty member was always a divisive personality. This was true long before the Nibley cultus developed. A little before my time there had been a huge factional war between him and another member of the Classics faculty. The hiring practices in the section were unorthodox to say the least. Up to my day it has been common to hire young faculty not long after they achieved ABD. This strapped them with the responsibility of completing an entire dissertation while teaching quite a bit and trying to publish just enough not to get sacked. As you may know, this caused one talented young faculty member to migrate to another department. That happened before your time, but I bet it had an impact on the situation you walked into.

Your senior faculty member quadrupled down on religious pursuits after some wrenching personal disappointments. This all took place after I had gone off for my PhD. From what I understand, this took a very strange turn. But, it explains something of how you fell afoul of that professor. Understand this, only the content changed. The M.O. of irrationally loving some and hating others was always there. It was there in my time. I was just "fortunate" to have been among the irrationally loved. I say fortunate because it did help me get where I am. Nevertheless, there were costs too.

Had I experienced the perfect storm of Nibleyolatry you describe, I would probably hate the guy to this day. It sounds like it reached a pitch of frenzy and absurdity beyond anything I could have ever predicted. The idea of having the guy's collection of Orson Scott Card paperbacks in the Ancient Studied Library boggles the mind. So too does the idea of having a course on Nibley of the kind you sketch out for us. What really disappoints me, however, although I can't say it surprises me, is that panel you described. Imagine my prolonged groan and rolling eyes. The sad truth is that the study of the Ancient Near East by those of questionable qualifications and/or apologetic motivations has been the bane of the study of antiquity at BYU for a very long time.

Perhaps it was my saving grace that I took my first two courses in Classics with a Catholic Latin instructor and a Comp. Lit. professor who was clinically insane. The latter was truly batshit crazy but at his best he was brilliant and inspiring. In short, I fell in love with Homer, Plato, and Euripides so deeply that my apologetic interests ended up taking a back seat to my affair with Classics. In fact, I irrationally resented Study Abroad in Israel and the BYU cult of Ancient Near Eastern Studies. I really liked some of the students, but I hated the dominance of ANE at BYU. So, the only course I took in anything related to that was Coptic, something I will never regret doing.

So, my trauma at BYU had everything to do with emotionally and psychologically troubled faculty members as well as the authoritarian and repressive administration. It had nothing to do with Nibley. Nibley was, rather, kind of a fun diversion from my serious Classics work. Aside from discussions of Mormon history with my friend Don, and my light interest in Gnosticism, I really didn't have much to do with the circle that worshipped at Nibley's altar. It was not until I started reading the Review that I got caught up in apologetics, and at that point my involvement resulted from the moral shock of reading nasty apologetics. It was not motivated by my fondness for Nibley.

Have you read Martha Nibley Beck's book? I ask because your paragraph about Nibley's ego resonates well with her account of her father. Despite the fact that she seems like quite a troubled character herself, the way she criticizes and mirrors her father can facilitate an interesting new perspective on Nibley. Oh, by the way, you really had me in stitches with the line: "with modesty that excessive, who needs pride?" My wife was starting to get annoyed by the loud guffaws from my end of the sofa.

As I sit back and mull over everything you said, I feel quite sad. I hope that things improve at the BYU. There are some good people there in the HCCL, people I love and admire. They really get the shaft from the university. I know that, in some instances, they have lost some good faculty or potential faculty because, as dodgy as it is in some ways, Religion at least pays a more reasonable salary. That's what I hear anyway.

It is interesting to me to note how cutting edge BYU was in terrorizing and starving out the ideologically inconvenient Humanities. They got there a couple of decades before the lunatics who have gutted public higher education. In any case, the philistines seem to have won, and the inadequacies of the Boise Rescue illustrate well the sad results of dilettante humanism as practiced by legal and corporate types who really just want pliable employees for parishioners.

At the end of the day, I prefer interesting readings from fundamentalists like Snuffer and Waterman to the dreary corporate pablum from Salt Lake City. As you said in that December 2014 posting, eventually it comes down to the question of quality of life. The words of Calgacus seem oddly appropriate in summing up the spiritual health of contemporary corporate Mormonism: "They make a desert and call it peace."

[_Symmachus]

Thanks for your generous and thoughtful reply, Kish. I wasn't aware of some of that background, but it does contextualize things a bit. The Classics section was in flux when I started (one faculty member died, three were preparing for retirement—one of them not without fight—one faculty member moved over to religion, and one new faculty member had just arrived, all in the first semester, so there were basically two other people in the section). And Nibley was obviously not going to last long, the Petersen biography came out the year before, and there was a flurry of activity commemorating him. Then, of course Martha Beck's book was about to come out and was discussed even before it was published (I have read it by the way, and she reminds me a lot of her father: a brilliant writer with a mind that is more inventive than it is precise, more interested in story than truth). Maybe all of that contributed to the environment I perceived.

The Nibley-olatry must have been going on for some time, though, because I can't otherwise understand why FARMS decided in the early 1980s to publish every damn thing he had ever written, whether of any value or not. I understand that in the past few years they have even published some personal letters, and I know that in 2005 they published a series of lecture notes for a course he had given 50 years previously. Not a sustained argument in a book manuscript, just lectures he had prepared. Those were still worth reading in 2005, because they had some brilliant and relevant insight? Um, ok.

I do think it's a little more stable in Classics now, as I'm sure you know, and their most recent faculty addition (a friend and classmate from the same period), as far as I know, has neither time nor interest for apologetics.

I didn't mean to paint too dreary a picture, though; I actually had a great time at BYU, and I found that many of the classics students were as disgusted by the pseudo-scholars in apologetics as I was, and most of them were extremely open-minded people, even the hardcore believers. A few of them even knew that I was an atheist who didn't go to Church, drank coffee with abandon, was creative with my ecclesiastical endorsements, and slept with my girlfriend (you can see why I had a great time at BYU) but they preferred open conversation, sincere friendship, and generous debate to petty moralizing, so we got a long just fine. And the Harvard Hellenist was very good to me and picked up a lot of the slack from the other faculty; I ended up in a very good PhD program, partially with his help, so I shouldn't complain.

But I know what you mean about the ANE dominance. The idea that someone would want to learn Greek to read Homer and without the intention to prove that the Odyssey preserves a coded template for the LDS temple ceremony was something that baffled those people.

[_ludwigm]

...
drank coffee with abandon
...
and slept with my girlfriend

An agglomeration for the jury.