''The Foundation for Indigenous Research and Mormonism''

[_Persephone]

Peterson:

First of all, Persephone Scratch, let me say that it’s great to have you here along with your kinsman Mister Scratch ...

In reality, I consider Mister Scratch and his usual endeavors (at least as evidenced by this message board) annoyingly puerile. I don't know the man (or woman) and have never corresponded with him/her in any fashion.

Nevertheless, I find a convergence of thought with him on a few points. Among them, his apparent belief that the primary pursuit of FARMS and the Maxwell Institute is apologetics. All the other things are window dressing.

I mean, why Middle Eastern texts? Other than your obvious personal interest in such things, what possible arguments could be advanced in favor of a Mormon university focusing so much on this niche in the academic world? From my perspective, it was a safe, controversy-free area in which there was a historical lack of interest on the part of American academia. It almost makes one wonder if the criteria were established up front, and then a search was undertaken to find a prime candidate for the "front" enterprise.

And now that the accolades are starting to trickle in, METI is proving to be nothing less than a stroke of genius. It has, as the saying goes, the capacity to hide a multitude of sins ... and tapirs.

[_harmony]

Other than your obvious personal interest in such things...

Bingo!

[_CaliforniaKid]

I mean, why Middle Eastern texts?

I suspect that Nibley had a great deal to do with that.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Other than your obvious personal interest in such things...

Bingo!

How shocking and shameful that a substantial project that I founded, created, and direct at BYU reflects my academic interests!

But now the secret's out, and I'm discredited forever.

I mean, why Middle Eastern texts?

I suspect that Nibley had a great deal to do with that.

Nothing whatsoever.

In reality, I consider Mister Scratch and his usual endeavors (at least as evidenced by this message board) annoyingly puerile.

Oh oh. I guess Kishkumen Scratch's chair remains vacant.

Well, I must say that you and I seem to think somewhat alike, in at least certain respects, on the matter of Mister Scratch. That's nice to know.

the primary pursuit of FARMS and the Maxwell Institute is apologetics. All the other things are window dressing.

Here's the truth:

FARMS was originally established as a private 501(c)3 foundation to support and distribute Mormon studies. Not necessarily apologetic in focus, but studies of Mormon scripture from a believing Mormon point of view, where that point of view is relevant. Even in Mormon studies, much of what FARMS has done and continues to do isn't directly apologetic at all (as in the case of, say, Royal Skousen's mammoth, nearly-two-decade long Critical Text project). And it operated for its first several years on a shoestring budget. But then some very gratifying private individual donations began to come in, unsolicited.

At a certain point, when people connected with FARMS (e.g., Noel Reynolds, Truman Madsen, and, initially only peripherally, yours truly) were approached by the new leadership of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation and the Scrolls editorial team to help put the scandal of their non-publication to an end, we determined that the institutional mechanisms for supporting such publication and creating an electronic database of the Scrolls didn't exist at BYU, so we decided to handle the matter ourselves. We were a group of scholars who, among us, had all of the requisite training. Our people would have been the ones doing it at BYU anyway, so we decided to take the project on ourselves.

This caught BYU's attention, and ultimately led to the affiliation of FARMS with BYU.

How did METI originate? I had decided, way back in graduate school, that such a translation series was highly desirable, and that its absence was a weird and serious hole in Western scholarship on Islam. Some years after I arrived at BYU, one of the Seventy, now emeritus, contacted me and wanted to have a conversation with me about how BYU could help the Church build a relationship with the Muslim world. We discussed roughly ten different options. A former academic himself, he was most taken with my suggestion of a translation series. He took it back to Salt Lake, and the order came down for me to launch such a series. But I had to raise the money for it myself.

Launching the project, and then running it, was very difficult and extraordinarily time-consuming. Besides the actual soliciting, vetting, editing, preparation, printing, and binding of books, I had to do all of the bookkeeping and all of the fundraising (something I deeply dislike), handle contracts for off-campus typesetting, find and hire part-time student employees, deal with personnel and paycheck issues, etc. My department and college had their hands full with normal teaching and faculty issues, and really couldn't help much. I hated it. It was destroying my life. So, one day, I approached the leadership of FARMS and pointed out that they already had a small office staff that routinely and competently dealt with all of those issues, and that adding the Islamic Translation Series to their assignments would represent only a slight increase in their duties but would take an enormous load off of me. They agreed, and I brought the translation project over to what was then FARMS.

The fit, given the name Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, was rather odd, but, organizationally, it worked very well. Eventually, since we were doing non-Mormon things like the Library of the Christian East, the Eastern Christian Texts Series, the Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, the Islamic Translation Series, digitizing Syriac manuscripts at the Vatican, performing multispectral imaging in Naples and Bonampak and Petra, publishing searchable electronic databases of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Popul Vuh, etc., we decided that the name was misleading. So we shifted, first, to the execrable title of Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts, and then, more happily, to The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

If you want to insist on imagining that all of our database projects and multispectral imaging projects and Islamic and Christian and Jewish publishing projects, and the like, are merely "window dressing," a smokescreen and a "ruse," there's nothing I can do to stop you. But I can tell you that you're wrong.

I mean, why Middle Eastern texts? Other than your obvious personal interest in such things, what possible arguments could be advanced in favor of a Mormon university focusing so much on this niche in the academic world?

My personal interests should not be discounted as a factor. Many undertakings, at BYU and elsewhere, originate at the start in the strong interests of a single member of the faculty.

But the obvious reasons have already been alluded to, above: The project needed to be done, and doing it at BYU represents a gesture of friendship and respect toward the Islamic world.

From my perspective, it was a safe, controversy-free area in which there was a historical lack of interest on the part of American academia.

If you imagine that there are no controversies in the field of Islamic philosophy, it can only be because you're unfamiliar with the field. There are rival schools of thinking, bitter personal antagonisms, massive egos, etc.

This is academia, after all. As Henry Kissinger once observed of departmental politics at Harvard, the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small.

It almost makes one wonder if the criteria were established up front, and then a search was undertaken to find a prime candidate for the "front" enterprise.

I'm relieved to know that it only almost makes you wonder about that silly scenario.

And now that the accolades are starting to trickle in, METI is proving to be nothing less than a stroke of genius.

Even though it really wasn't meant as such, I'll take that as a generous personal compliment.

[_AlmaBound]

At a certain point, when people connected with FARMS (e.g., Noel Reynolds, Truman Madsen, and, initially only peripherally, yours truly) were approached by the new leadership of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation and the Scrolls editorial team to help put the scandal of their non-publication to an end, we determined that the institutional mechanisms for supporting such publication and creating an electronic database of the Scrolls didn't exist at BYU, so we decided to handle the matter ourselves. We were a group of scholars who, among us, had all of the requisite training. Our people would have been the ones doing it at BYU anyway, so we decided to take the project on ourselves.

--

If you want to insist on imagining that all of our database projects and multispectral imaging projects and Islamic and Christian and Jewish publishing projects, and the like, are merely "window dressing," a smokescreen and a "ruse," there's nothing I can do to stop you. But I can tell you that you're wrong.

Wait a second, so the claim to fame lies in database management and web-publishing?

I'm somewhat familiar with multi-spectral imaging as well, could you please provide a bit more detail about those projects you refer to above?

edited - I looked up some information on the multi-spectral imaging projects and am actually somewhat impressed with those efforts.

[_Mister Scratch]

At a certain point, when people connected with FARMS (e.g., Noel Reynolds, Truman Madsen, and, initially only peripherally, yours truly) were approached by the new leadership of the Dead Sea Scrolls Foundation and the Scrolls editorial team to help put the scandal of their non-publication to an end, we determined that the institutional mechanisms for supporting such publication and creating an electronic database of the Scrolls didn't exist at BYU, so we decided to handle the matter ourselves. We were a group of scholars who, among us, had all of the requisite training. Our people would have been the ones doing it at BYU anyway, so we decided to take the project on ourselves.

[SNIP!]

Launching the project, and then running it, was very difficult and extraordinarily time-consuming. Besides the actual soliciting, vetting, editing, preparation, printing, and binding of books, I had to do all of the bookkeeping and all of the fundraising (something I deeply dislike), handle contracts for off-campus typesetting, find and hire part-time student employees, deal with personnel and paycheck issues, etc. My department and college had their hands full with normal teaching and faculty issues, and really couldn't help much. I hated it. It was destroying my life. So, one day, I approached the leadership of FARMS and pointed out that they already had a small office staff that routinely and competently dealt with all of those issues, and that adding the Islamic Translation Series to their assignments would represent only a slight increase in their duties but would take an enormous load off of me. They agreed, and I brought the translation project over to what was then FARMS.

None of this really explains how apologetics fits into the picture. You make it sound like the affiliation was all just some sort of "happy accident." The Dead Sea Scrolls people wanted work done....and so BYU allowed an essentially Mopologetic organization to join up with the University?

Ultimately, it seems just as Persephone has said: you guys slipped your Mopologetics in under the radar. The powers-that-be wanted legit scholarship, and yet you managed to conveniently acquire this financial and "offical" patina for your Mopologetic endeavors.

Or, was there some sort of official discussion about how Mopologetics would continue to be done by the BYU Dead Sea Scrolls scholars? Did you guys "sneak" the Mopologetics into the picture, or was there official discussion about allowing it among BYU administrators?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Wait a second, so the claim to fame lies in database management and web-publishing?

No, not really.

I'm somewhat familiar with multi-spectral imaging as well, could you please provide a bit more detail about those projects you refer to above?

I'm not sure whether this is up to date, but you can start here:

http://cpart.BYU.edu/

You can also Google Roger Macfarlane and Herculaneum, and you'll come up with a fair amount.

I might also recommend that you try to find the video Out of the Ashes.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Scratch, I'm not in the mood to gratify your perpetually conspiratorial suspicions that something sinister and underhanded was going on.

I've told the story. While, obviously, I could give more details -- it would require hours and hours to do so -- what I've written here is the essential outline.

Nothing I can do or say will ever convince you that I'm not a scoundrel, that we're not collectively up to something no good, etc. You're a lost cause. I don't write for you or for any of the other Scratches. I write for normal people.

[_AlmaBound]

I'm not sure whether this is up to date, but you can start here:

http://cpart.BYU.edu/

You can also Google Roger Macfarlane and Herculaneum, and you'll come up with a fair amount.

I might also recommend that you try to find the video Out of the Ashes.

Yes, I looked around a bit and saw some of those projects and found them very interesting.

The database associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, on the other hand, while valuable, was not the type of involvement I had thought was being conducted.

I thought there was more analysis and interpretation, so the database project is not as impressive to me, perhaps based on some faulty assumptions about the involvement that I had made.

[_Daniel Peterson]

The database associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, on the other hand, while valuable, was not the type of involvement I had thought was being conducted.

I thought there was more analysis and interpretation, so the database project is not as impressive to me, perhaps based on some faulty assumptions about the involvement that I had made.

There was an enormous investment of analysis and scholarship that went into tagging and creating a searchable database of the Hebrew- and Aramaic-language Dead Sea Scrolls. (Do you, incidentally, know a Semitic language? The morphological analysis required for identifying verbal and nominal forms across their various permutations and combinations took years by itself.)

However, if you're looking for something else, it might interest you to know that Andrew Skinner (the immediate past-director of the Maxwell Institute) and David Seely (past vice-chairman of the FARMS board, now disbanded) and Donald Parry (a past member of the FARMS board, now disbanded) and Dana Pike (a past associate editor of the FARMS Journal of Book of Mormon Studies) are all members of the international Dead Sea Scrolls editorial board. You can, if you're interested, look up the volumes they've edited for the official Oxford Discoveries in the Judean Desert series and some of the other things they've published on the Scrolls.

FARMS or the Maxwell Institute has never seen interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls as something that it ought to do, as such, except for a Mormon audience. See, for example, the web site that we created to accompany a traveling exhibit on the Scrolls some years back:

http://mi.BYU.edu/dss/

and, particularly, the now-somewhat-dated bibliography here:

http://mi.BYU.edu/dss/contrib.html

Our role, as we've seen it, has been to put the materials for such study into the hands of scholars everywhere. But individuals associated with the Maxwell Institute have been very much involved with analysis and interpretation of the Scrolls in the standard scholarly venues, and the Institute has sponsored two international conferences on the Scrolls, in Provo and in Jerusalem.