Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

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_Markk
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Markk »

Kishkumen wrote:
Markk wrote:I was just as LDS as you are/where...maybe more so culturally and historically 5th and 6th generation all sides. My criticism was of Nibley as a Mormon, not as a Evangelical.


You're the one who got upset over me referring to "your faith." You don't have anything to prove with regard to that or your LDS background. I really don't care.

Markk wrote:He was a hack in the sense it was a means to an end aside from the truth.


I guess that depends on what you define as the truth, and whether you feel Nibley was obliged to agree with you because it's so obvious to everyone.

Markk wrote:He purposely deceived us...in saying things like Jesus went through the temple secretly with apostles, GA, and 70's in a talk, and implied that there were garments in a LDS construct is very deceitful.


You're in fantasyland, Markk. You have no idea what his motives were. The guy believed in what he was doing. He actually believed that Jesus did those things. Yes, he was unable to demonstrate it through regular academic methods, but I don't think he was trying to do so. He proceeded from a position of faith in the LDS Church and assumed his readers wanted to be enriched in the way he felt enriched by his education.

The simple truth here is that no one knows what Jesus was doing and everyone is more or less making up the Jesus that best suits their own views. Nibley is no more or less culpable than any other religionist or historian who contructs an idiosyncratic Jesus. Anyone who attempts to describe Jesus will, in the end, make up his or her own version.

Markk wrote:So again this has noting to do with me being a evangelical...and in a sense a ex-Mormon, but that Nibley was a propagandist and in a very real way a liar in print.

One thing I have noticed, is that now that internet Mopology is more or less instinct...this forum has turned into a homer forum of little objectivity. It too bad.


Boohoo. I have long seen the tendency of many ex-Mormons to see the worst in the people they used to look to for wisdom, guidance, and learning as LDS people. You seem to think bias and wishful thinking are uniquely Mormon diseases. I say you need Nibley to be a liar so you feel morally justified rejecting Mormonism. He can't just be wrong. He has to be maliciously wrong. Otherwise you don't get to pat yourself on the back or believe that you finally found the correct answers.



Go back and read our first exchange...and again you have to make it by my current faith and not what and why I believe he was purposely deceitful.

I'll give you that I do not know his heart and what he believed, but neither do you. I do know I hung onto Mormonism, defended it, and yet in my heart knew it was BS. I believe most here would say the same.

Nibley had absolutely no part of my disbelief of LDS theology and thought...I don't need him to be a liar, Joseph Smith and BY filled that void long ago in my decision making about my Mormon faith, chiefly I could never be a God. I believe he is a liar in that when I do read his stuff, and take a hour or two of my life to actually check out his footends, I find they are total BS...which is what this thread is about, and why I posted what I did.

LOL...I would have loved to have posted my thoughts under a sockpuppet© of a atheist and see how you would have responded.

He is either a liar or delusional...your choice.
Don't take life so seriously in that " sooner or later we are just old men in funny clothes" "Tom 'T-Bone' Wolk"
_Kishkumen
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Kishkumen »

Markk wrote:Go back and read our first exchange...and again you have to make it by my current faith and not what and why I believe he was purposely deceitful.

I'll give you that I do not know his heart and what he believed, but neither do you. I do know I hung onto Mormonism, defended it, and yet in my heart knew it was BS. I believe most here would say the same.

Nibley had absolutely no part of my disbelief of LDS theology and thought...I don't need him to be a liar, Joseph Smith and BY filled that void long ago in my decision making about my Mormon faith, chiefly I could never be a God. I believe he is a liar in that when I do read his stuff, and take a hour or two of my life to actually check out his footends, I find they are total BS...which is what this thread is about, and why I posted what I did.

LOL...I would have loved to have posted my thoughts under a sockpuppet© of a atheist and see how you would have responded.

He is either a liar or delusional...your choice.


As I said, it is important to you to condemn Nibley. Deny it all you like, you are not satisfied with disagreeing. No, he has to be lying or crazy. It is a function of your own insecurity, really. You could be satisfied that your faith is more consistent with the dominant orthodox theology in Christianity. But for you there has to be more. Someday I hope you are happy enough with your choices that you don't feel the need to impugn the character or sanity of others to convince yourself that your disagreement is justified. We can all hope as much for ourselves. Sometimes it seems like it really is too much to hope for.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_kairos
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _kairos »

Take Nibley out of his Mormon environs for a moment- can someone cite a peer reviewed piece outside Mormonism by nibley in his area of scholarship that got published by a non-mormon journal?

i am thinking if nibley submitted a piece in the above arena he would try to rely on current scholarship in that area and be very careful his sources backed up his theme.

i can't seem him being "sloppy" outside Mormonism.

k
_Kishkumen
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Kishkumen »

"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_kairos
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _kairos »




thanx kish and by the way your really good insights and logical discussion added class to what would have been a short and sweet thread! good work!

k
_Rosebud
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Rosebud »

Kishkumen wrote:
Rosebud wrote:2. I don't think it's possible for me or Kish or anyone else here or anywhere to really know what Nibley believed or didn't believe about the veracity of Mormonism. It's a guessing game. My interpretation is based on my life experiences etc. and Kish's interpretation is based on Kish's life experineces, etc. Both of us are interpreting and neither of us (and no one else) really knows. It's silly, in my mind, for anyone to claim in surety that they know what Nibley really thought or believed.


I suppose that yes, ultimately, no one truly knows the inner life of any other person, including one's own spouse, beloved, child, parent, etc. We size people up the best we can and proceed on faith. My judgment based on personal experience and the experience of his friends, both those I knew personally and those who reported their experience of Nibley, is that he believed in Mormonism and was boosting it in the best way he knew how. I will go with those kinds of conclusions over psychological speculations and sensational memoirs every time.


This is interesting. You choose the adjective "sensational" to describe his daughter's work but not his work. At the same time you seem to insinuate (correct me if I'm wrong) that some close family relationships bring us closer to knowing what someone's true beliefs might be (by using the examples of "spouse," "beloved," "child" and "parent" to emphasize your implied point). I think this is true even if this is not what you're getting at, for what it's worth. The way I see it, his daughter is/was a close relationship and likely had more insight into his actions than less close relationships and that both her work and his work could be described as "sensational." Yet her perspective about Nibley is discredited over less close relationships with whom you've spoken and her work is minimized with the adjective "sensational" while his work is defended.

I think I'm more a probability and an accountability person than a person who is interested in the quality of scholarship. I don't really care about his scholarship because I don't really care about Mopology or him. I care that people care enough to defend him when it's more probable than not that he knowingly faked a lot and that what he faked was highly influential during his time period and therefore, in my opinion, had a deleterious effect on a lot of people. I'm tired of people with authority, influence and power behaving badly while they're publicly defended while people with less power have their positions minimized (through words like "sensational" applied unevenly, etc.) even when there is a higher probability that the person who is being publicly minimized is speaking more honestly than the person who is being publicly defended. Public defense goes to the person with power and influence and public minimization goes to the disempowered party.

This pattern of defense of the person in power and minimization of the disempowered happens again and again. This reminds me of TBMs defending the brethren no matter what they do and say against disempowered Mormon populations. Defense of public heroes with influence is one of Beck's main theses and is a pattern that occurs inside and outside of Mormonism, and often. This pattern is what I see in your words, Kish. Common human behavior and, to be frank, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of it because it's such a big part of Mormonism.

Here are the sorts of probabilities I think through when I am assessing which party is being more honest, which party had more power and which party needs to be held accountable. Yes, I am just pulling these out of my head.

Probabilities I consider as I'm assessing Nibley's honesty:

*Probability that Nibley was highly educated: 100%
*Probability that Nibley understood he was ethically responsible to write and speak accurately regardless of whether or not his work would be subject to peer review: 100%
*Probability that the Book of Mormon is a translation of ancient gold plates: 0%
*Probabilty that Nibley knew the things he wrote were inaccurate: 95%
*Probability that Nibley was sloppy in his scholarship: 95%
*Probability that Nibley believed his sloppy scholarship was accurate: 5%

Probabilities I consider as I'm assessing Nibley's power:

* Probability that Nibley understood that his sloppy scholarship would be believed by his audiences and was highly influential: 95%

Probabilities I consider as I'm assessing the harm Nibley may have done:

* Probability that the nonsense that Nibley wrote and said led people to draw inaccurate conclusions: 100%
* Probability that there might be some truth in what Beck wrote about her father committing crimes against her: idk... I'll say 50% to be safe, but not 0 and not 100 and not something like 5% or 95%. I just don't know. Lots of fathers commit crimes against their children. If it seems safer, I can move the number down to 25% or maybe 33% since between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 children are victims of child sexual abuse. That way I'm not making any rash statements. She knew him well and for whatever reason, she make the decision to write an exposé.

Probabilities I consider when I am assessing Beck's honesty:

Probability that she believed what she said was true: 95%

I don't really know how to assess probabilities of Beck's power or the harm Beck may have done because I don't know if what she said was true or not. If there is some truth to it, then she was a very disempowered person who probably took some power back through writing the book. If he did commit crimes, she had a right to write it. If there is no truth to it and she still believed it, then she is still a disempowered person who took some power back through writing the book. This just doesn't compare to me to being similar to being a highly educated, powerful and influential person knowingly engaging in sloppy influential scholarship. I don't even know that it's more extreme. The dad had power and prestige and influenced far more people than the daughter. If he was dishonest, his behaviors are very extreme. Again, I would use the word "sensational" to describe both of them.

If Beck's book has been harmful to guilty parties, that's probably a good thing. If it has been harmful to innocent parties, that's a tragedy. But I don't know how I can use probabilities to assess those things because I just don't have the kind of information I would need about what happened in their family. But regardless, I know the Book of Mormon isn't the word of God and that Nibley's ideas were nonsense. I have more information about what he should be held accountable for than I have about what she should be held accountable for.

_________

And, to repeat, my concern is the common defense of powerful and influential people with the simultaneous minimization of disempowered people. People commonly have the tendency to give the powerful party a pass while they hold the disempowered party rigidly accountable. (Just look at the way TBMs defend the brethren's LGBT excommunication policy. Same phenomenon.)
Chronological List of Relevant Documents, Media Reports and Occurrences with Links regarding the lawsuit alleging President Nelson's daughter and son-in-law are sexual predators.

By our own Mary (with maybe some input from me when I can help). Thank you Mary!

Thread about the lawsuit

Thread about Mary's chronological document
_Kishkumen
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Kishkumen »

Rosebud wrote:This is interesting. You choose the adjective "sensational" to describe his daughter's work but not his work.


Probably because it is an apt description of her work, which is practically a cliché of a cult-victim memoir. "Look at how weird and insular the Mormons are! Can you believe I escaped this secretive cult? My own daddy was the Egyptian high priest of kiddy diddling!"

Rosebud wrote:At the same time you seem to insinuate (correct me if I'm wrong) that some close family relationships bring us closer to knowing what someone's true beliefs might be (by using the examples of "spouse," "beloved," "child" and "parent" to emphasize your implied point). I think this is true even if this is not what you're getting at, for what it's worth. The way I see it, his daughter is/was a close relationship and likely had more insight into his actions than less close relationships and that both her work and his work could be described as "sensational." Yet her perspective about Nibley is discredited over less close relationships with whom you've spoken and her work is minimized with the adjective "sensational" while his work is defended.


Which of her siblings backs her story?

Rosebud wrote:I think I'm more a probability and an accountability person than a person who is interested in the quality of scholarship.


Then maybe you should start a thread on that topic, instead of muddying up one on the reliability of Nibley's footnotes.

And, to repeat, my concern is the common defense of powerful and influential people with the simultaneous minimization of disempowered people. People commonly have the tendency to give the powerful party a pass while they hold the disempowered party rigidly accountable. (Just look at the way TBMs defend the brethren's LGBT excommunication policy. Same phenomenon.)


Yes, and we all know how I spend all my time defending the status quo while piling on the victims of oppression.

I consider Martha Beck to be as much a victim and a hero as other celebrity leave-takers.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
_Markk
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Markk »

Kishkumen wrote:
As I said, it is important to you to condemn Nibley. Deny it all you like, you are not satisfied with disagreeing. No, he has to be lying or crazy. It is a function of your own insecurity, really. You could be satisfied that your faith is more consistent with the dominant orthodox theology in Christianity. But for you there has to be more. Someday I hope you are happy enough with your choices that you don't feel the need to impugn the character or sanity of others to convince yourself that your disagreement is justified. We can all hope as much for ourselves. Sometimes it seems like it really is too much to hope for.


Crazy? Did I say that?

You must be the prophet now in that you know so much about my needs. by the way...look at the number of posts we both have and then evaluate "needs" and this forum? How much time do you spend here justifying your decisions? When I look back at the time I wasted here...I wonder where folks like you have so much time.

Back to the OP

When Nibley spoke in a talk to TBMs... that Jesus secretly walked the apostles, GA's, and 70s through the Temple in the 40 days after his crucifixion...why can't I believe he was lying or delusional about that? I can't even find a source that would allow me to believe he was fudging a bit?


"The fourth was the main thing he came to do. He took them through the temple, he taught them temple ordinances. Only the apostles and the general authorities, the seventies, were instructed in these-things to be handed down, not divulged to the public. Though they were very carefully kept from the public, we have these ordinances now as they are described here, and this I have talked about in the temple on occasion. I just mention here these generalities, the importance of these documents, what they meant to those people. The person who receives these becomes a son. He both gives and receives...the signs and the tokens of the God of Truth while demonstrating the same to the Church, all in the hopes that these ordinances may some day become realities." (Hugh Nibley, Old Testament and Related Studies, edited by John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, and Don E. Norton [Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1986], 159-160.)


When Christ came back...who were these General Authorities?
Don't take life so seriously in that " sooner or later we are just old men in funny clothes" "Tom 'T-Bone' Wolk"
_Symmachus
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Symmachus »

I don't see Martha Beck as someone who is marginalized and disempowered. Maybe by the insular and minuscule Mormon community (and within that by the very few who know who either she or her father are), but she has quite publicly left those saints, and she commands a far, far wider audience than her father ever had. More people have read her books and columns, seen her on Oprah, and attended her seminars online or in person than even know who the “F” Hugh Nibley was. The one thing her audience are likely to know about him, if they ever learn his name, is that he molested his daughter while wearing an alligator costume.
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."

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_Kishkumen
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Re: Nibley: Footnote faker or not?

Post by _Kishkumen »

Markk wrote:Crazy? Did I say that?


You called him delusional. Isn't that close enough?

Markk wrote:You must be the prophet now in that you know so much about my needs. by the way...look at the number of posts we both have and then evaluate "needs" and this forum? How much time do you spend here justifying your decisions? When I look back at the time I wasted here...I wonder where folks like you have so much time.


And how much time did you waste at World Table? How much time did you spend here revealing the shenanigans over there? How many times did you ask us what we thought of your interactions over there?

No worries! We are all just regular folks here, and I don't think any one of us claims to be a perfect being. I know I don't. If you can't face the fact that your denigration of Nibley smacks of self-justification, I think we can all be sympathetic. Do I deny that I do some of the same crap?

I do it all the time. I try to appear like a decent human being. I fail constantly, but I seem determined to persuade others that I am. Oh well.

Markk wrote:When Christ came back...who were these General Authorities?


Of course there were no GAs. There probably wasn't even a church. But Nibley's extrapolation is perfectly in line with LDS assumptions and doctrine. Mormons incorrectly believe that Jesus established a sophisticated Church organization, which looked very much like the LDS Church looks today. Nibley buys into that. He slots that into the blank space that is Christ's 40-day post-resurrection ministry.

This isn't rocket science, Mark. He could do all of that, believe it was true, and not be a liar or fantasist. He was behaving like a literalist believer.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
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