A friend of mine forwarded a link to the most recent episode of the Interpreter Insights podcast. The
August 20 podcast episode features host Terry Hutchinson interviewing Daniel Peterson about several topics, including volumes 7 and 8 of
Interpreter. Below is a rough transcript of a portion of the podcast that caught my attention. But first, a timeline of events to note by way of background:
September 27, 1991: Elder Neal Maxwell gave an address at the annual FARMS banquet, held on BYU’s campus.
October 5, 1991: Matt Roper reportedly made a transcription of a recording of Elder Maxwell’s address.
1992 or 1993: A
BYU Studies issue featured a version of Elder Maxwell’s remarks under the title “
Discipleship and Scholarship.” An editorial note stated that “[t]his article is a revision of portions of the talk he gave at the annual banquet of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies on the Brigham Young University campus September 27, 1991.”
Late 1996: Elder Maxwell was diagnosed with cancer.
1997: President Gordon Hinckley invited FARMS to become part of BYU. William Hamblin later disclosed the motivation behind the invitation: “BYU wanted to gain control of land that FARMS owned, and be able to manipulate potential donations to FARMS.”
2001: FARMS was renamed as the Institute for the Study and Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts (ISPART).
2004: Elder Maxwell died.
2006: ISPART was renamed as the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.
June 2012: Gerald Bradford fired Daniel Peterson as editor of
Mormon Studies Review. Bill Hamblin later revealed that the Bradford Junta ousted Peterson as part of a long-running coup at the “new” Maxwell Institute.
August 2012: the newly formed Interpreter Foundation published the first article in a new journal titled
Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture.
December 2013:
Interpreter published a reportedly lightly edited version of Matt Roper’s transcription of Elder Maxwell’s 1991 address, as a salvo against the “new” Maxwell Institute. According to Daniel Peterson’s editorial notes accompanying the published transcription, the recording of the address did not appear to be extant. (It seems conceivable that the recording is in a file next to the lost second Watson letter.)
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Hutchinson: “Now, typically in each volume [of
Interpreter], Dan, you do an introduction. So, this is weird because in volume 7 you did one, but you were
republishing a talk by Neal, Elder Neal Maxwell. Tell us a little about that, if you would. Just a couple of minutes.”
Peterson: “Yeah, sure. He gave what I regard as a very important talk. It turned out to be one of his very last talks. He came down to BYU—of course, we knew that he had been ill; we thought he was doing better—but he passed away shortly after that. And he gave a really positive talk about the function of apologetics and so on.
Now, we didn’t know—there was no text of it that survived, but Matt Roper got a recording of it and transcribed it. And I got approval from Elder Maxwell’s family to run that, because we thought it was such a valuable document. And it was his final thoughts on—or near-to-final thoughts—on the idea of apologetics. He had always been sort of a patron of ours. Very, very friendly, very interested in what we were doing. And one of the last things he said was, it would be a real pity if you were to lose your focus. He said some organizations do that. And, you know, I was thinking at the time that there are some books on charitable foundations that have been established by people with a certain political or social-cultural view, like the Ford Foundation, which, within a few years, was taken over by people whose views are [he laughs] almost the opposite of the founders, what the founders wanted the money to be used for and to support. And so he said, it would be a real pity if you were to lose your direction and go a different way.
Well, that is, in fact, what happened not too [he laughs] terribly long after that, because there was a kind of coup, and a different group of people took over the leading of the foundation. So I thought it was an important thing to get on record—that Elder Maxwell liked the way we had been going and didn’t want us to change it. But it did change.”
Hutchinson: “Well, and Interpreter was the appropriate place to put it, because this is really the successor to the original FARMS …”
Peterson: “It is.”
Hutchinson: “… and the original Maxwell Institute.”
Peterson: “Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we had the same mindset, and the new group at Maxwell, even if they—I think now they’re under leadership that is
okay—but they’re not doing what we founded the organization to do anymore. And they likely never will.”
Hutchinson: “No, no, they don’t have the personnel …”
Peterson: “Right.”
Hutchinson: “… and I don’t know that they have the interest, but that’s a topic for another time.”
Peterson; “Yeah.”
I must confess that I had difficulty following Peterson during the podcast. He seemed to be collapsing time. I understood Peterson to be saying that Elder Maxwell spoke at BYU in what was one of his last talks and that Maxwell died shortly thereafter. As documented above, Elder Maxwell gave his banquet address in 1991. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1996—five years later. (It is unclear how Peterson and his associates knew Maxwell was sick back in 1991.) Elder Maxwell died in 2004. Thus, Elder Maxwell passed away about thirteen years after his banquet address. Perhaps Peterson intended to say that Elder Maxwell’s 1991 address represented his final—or near-final—remarks
on the function of apologetics. Even if that is the case, though, Elder Maxwell did not “pass away shortly after that.”
I assume that Peterson will clear up the confusion soon.
