On Fake Evangelical Doctorates

[Symmachus]

My favorite Gaskill publication is the review in the old Review of Books on the Book of Mormon that Ms Jack linked, a review of an unpublished work entitled "“The Question of the Validity of Baptism Conferred in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (unpublished), by Luis Ladaria." Unpublished? Well, that's what they do. But what I enjoyed was the title of his review: "Maximus Nothus Decretum." You Latinists will see that elementary mistake. Gaskill's Latin is bad, fine. But none of the learned FARMSians caught this before publication?

Anyway, I had a Book of Mormon class from him. Nice guy. He used to say things like "When I taught at Stanford" when he meant the LDS Institute at Stanford, which was amusing. It flattered not only himself but the students, as well. He was hardly the only one who did that sort of thing, and indeed I had a CES employee for a bishop who would talk about teaching at Harvard, when he only meant the LDS Institute around the corner. sic parvis componere magna solebant. Must be a thing with those guys.

He once saw me with a number of books about various languages on a table in the Lee library and, recognizing me as his student, asked me what I studied and what I was doing. I told him. He was very friendly and encouraging. In class after that, whenever he would mention some fact about Hebrew or antiquity, he would occasionally call on me to confirm the details, "X, Y, Z—wouldn't you say Symmachus? Brothers and Sister, he's taken every Hebrew class you can get here, so he knows what I'm talking about." I would say "sure" or just nod. I had already realized by about the third class that he didn't really know the technical parts (like languages) of the tools he was trying to use for whatever point he wanted to make about the Book of Mormon. The class ate that stuff up all the same, but I was not humble enough to make a show of it in a public and pointless way; I needed a grade, too. I recognized it as another flattery loop: he singles me out as a kind of expert, but really in doing so he shows the class that he can recognize expertise (which was his substitute for having it). Not that I was any kind of an expert as an undergraduate: that's why it was supposed to flatter me, I guess. However, once he asked me a question about some prophecy of Lehi and Hebrew verb tenses. He did that thing, "X, Y, Z, right Symmachus?" I said, "I'm not so sure," and gave a brief reason why. Well, that was the end of that. If I was wrong, I was no longer the expert, and he was no longer the knowing judge of expertise; if I was right, he didn't have the expertise. There was no point in maintaining the loop. He left me to myself after that. I got an A, though, which is all I cared about, because some of those religion classes can be very challenging for people not inclined to believe, as MG would put it, not really able to fake the discourse of testimony bearing, as I was not. At least in Gaskill's class, I could write all about Hebrew in the assignments and didn't have to explain how the Book of Mormon improved my life ("it's a very reliable doorstop and also works as a book end when laid on its side" is about the best I could answer to questions like that).

I understand highlighting the hypocrisy around his degree, at least to a point. When the Faith-Promoting-Rumor people made a big deal about Gaskill's book, as well as Taylor Petrey at By Common Consent, I thought it was over the top, though hilarious. What do they expect? I was not aware that Cedar Fort Press, or whatever it was, was some kind of scholarly press with academic credibility to maintain, nor that Deseret Book, which sold it, was known for its high intellectual standards. Don't they also sell The God Theorem (which contains no theorems, disappointingly)? If he were a professor in a real department instead of, basically, a campus minister, I would see the point of such a campaign, but people like Gaskill discredit themselves to people who actually care about scholarship. It was a mark of smallness on Petrey's part, I thought. It's like writing that Church movies aren't historically accurate (gee, what a surprise): fine for anonymous person on this board but kind of unbecoming to do so in one's professional role, tediously laying out one's full professional title and pompously christening such complaints as a "warning" to the faithful, as if anyone knows or cares. It had the odor of jealousy about it: here's this phony scholar whose books are bought by people, not just libraries, and within Mormon society, Gaskill's wider reach is a refutation of everything that an academic works for. Stepping into "warn" people about Gaskill's book (that's the word Petrey used) was only a little bit better than reviewing an unpublished work, though at least Petrey's "warning" was free from grammatical errors. The Faith-Promoting Rumor people I understand: they're upset that the campus ministry at BYU doesn't want droids like them. It's was probably all jealously there. They don't go after Einar Erickson because he is not occupying the office they feel should go to them. Someday they'll realize that BYU isn't about scholarship.

I'm sure it's a hollow degree, but how did Gaskill get hired into CES as someone who came from an evangelical theological seminary with the word "trinity" in it? Did that come up in the interview at all? I know he was a convert, and he claimed in our class to have been Greek Orthodox before he was Mormon, so it is even more confusing. I wonder how many Gaskills you will find at your local Greek Orthodox church, and how many of those would go to to a place like Trinity Theological Seminary. I wonder.

I probably have a less idealistic view than Ms Jack of academia—few dissertations contribute anything and might as well be lost!—but I laughed so much on learning that Gaskill’s is “no longer extant.” Brilliant! Maybe we can reconstruct it. Since it’s probably plagiarised to some extant, parts of it exist. Cassius University would be the natural home for a multi volume “Gaskill Dissertation Critical Text Project.”

[MsJack]

Unpublished? Well, that's what they do. But what I enjoyed was the title of his review: "Maximus Nothus Decretum." You Latinists will see that elementary mistake. Gaskill's Latin is bad, fine. But none of the learned FARMSians caught this before publication?

I was adding links fastly-and-furiously and barely glanced at the title of his article. Oh my!

As for the unpublished aspect, I recall FARMS shooting for some extremely low-hanging fruit a number of times. I remember them reviewing a joke of a dissertation out of Oral Roberts University that probably no one else had ever read.

Anyway, I had a Book of Mormon class from him. Nice guy. He used to say things like "When I taught at Stanford" when he meant the LDS Institute at Stanford, which was amusing. It flattered not only himself but the students, as well. He was hardly the only one who did that sort of thing, and indeed I had a CES employee for a bishop who would talk about teaching at Harvard, when he only meant the LDS Institute around the corner. sic parvis componere magna solebant. Must be a thing with those guys.

Funny. I'm old enough to remember when the most scandalous thing about the late Ravi Zacharias was his comical attempts at inflating his academic credentials. He did something pretty similar, claiming he had been a "visiting scholar at Cambridge" and "official lecturer at Oxford."

Narrator: He was not.

Zacharias also had a "fake" doctorate in that he tried calling himself "doctor" after receiving an honorary doctorate.

Thanks for the fond stories about Gaskill. On his own, I think he's mostly harmless; it's not his fault Mopologists went after similarly-situated folks like James White (who, likewise, is far more popular minister than academic and is hardly a mover and shaker in Trinitarian theology despite his "dissertation" ostensibly being on the topic; I've read The Forgotten Trinity and I doubt it's been mentioned in very many literature reviews).

BUT (youth pastor voice) even a "campus minister" shouldn't plagiarize. Gaskill probably hands out a syllabus every semester saying students can get kicked out of BYU if they plagiarize their assignments in his classes, yet he plagiarizes frequently and flagrantly. Whether or not he'd personally act on such warnings is another question, but hypocrisy always rankles people.

I think prog Mormons are just frustrated there are so few prog Mormon academic spaces. Sure, there's an endowed chair here, a Taylor Petrey there, a Kathleen Flake over here, but does anyone have a "Mormon Studies"-ish department outside of Claremont and maybe some Utah universities?

I'm sure it's a hollow degree, but how did Gaskill get hired into CES as someone who came from an evangelical theological seminary with the word "trinity" in it? Did that come up in the interview at all? I know he was a convert, and he claimed in our class to have been Greek Orthodox before he was Mormon, so it is even more confusing. I wonder how many Gaskills you will find at your local Greek Orthodox church, and how many of those would go to to a place like Trinity Theological Seminary. I wonder.

I have to wonder if they didn't look carefully and thought it was one of the more notable Trinity schools, like Connecticut. Reportedly he tried to apply to the Ancient Scripture department and got rejected and shuffled over to CH&D. As to why TTS, I imagine he shopped around until he found a cheap school that would let him turn in mostly-pre-completed work in exchange for a doctorate.

I'm aware most dissertations have few (if any) readers outside of the committee---although, I put my MA thesis on Academia a few months ago and now it gets Googled almost every week. I'm not sure how Academia decides "reader" versus "viewer" but it has a whole 4 readers, 29 views. Who knows, if I'd put it on there back in 2016, I might have a whole 30 readers by now.

Which is to say, I wonder how much lack of access affects the dismal numbers of people who bother to read dissertations.

I laughed so much on learning that Gaskill’s is “no longer extant.” Brilliant! Maybe we can reconstruct it. Since it’s probably plagiarised to some extant, parts of it exist. Cassius University would be the natural home for a multi volume “Gaskill Dissertation Critical Text Project.”

I enjoyed your thoughts, Symmachus. Good to see you again.

[drumdude]

LDS apologetics would certainly be much more credible if the apologists degrees were in fields related to apologetics.

[Fence Sitter]

All we really need to know is that BYU hired this guy and passed on David Bokovoy.

[MsJack]

Incidental Question - Do Evangelicals still support Donald Trump with their hearts and souls?

Unfortunately, a lot of them still do (I never did). Let's go Dark Brandon.

[dastardly stem]

Back in the 90s when all the rage was Peterson and hamblin arguing with white, which inspired me to read his letters to a Mormon elder book (which I deemed as basically idiotic) and they complained about his weak-assed phd, I, as a non-academic, was like “yeah but his arguments suck anyway”.

Now, looking back, and I realize Peterson and Hamblin had nothing better, I feel kinda silly again. Oops. Also I imagine his book may speak to me a little more now. Ah well, I guess bias and perspective are my true drivers.

Interesting thread, ms jack. I don’t mean to derail, sometimes I can’t help but add an irrelevant memory. It makes me wonder if went into academics and if I had an apologist mindset as I wanted when I was at that school boy age, if I too would have been a foolish apologist presenting laughable arguments like Gee or plagiarizing my way to fellow defenders’ fawning praise. Probably the latter. I cringe imaging it though, either way.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Using floppy disks in the year 2000. -_-

- Doc

[Dr. Shades]

I recommend posters read the Amazon reviews. I wish I could lol, but alas, no lols are to be had.

When you say "read the Amazon reviews," will you please be more specific?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I recommend posters read the Amazon reviews. I wish I could lol, but alas, no lols are to be had.

When you say "read the Amazon reviews," will you please be more specific?

Sorry, I thought the reader would give Ms. Jack the courtesy of clicking on her links in order to understand her frame of reference. When she said “… and touting a known forgery as a possibly ancient document---“ there was a hyperlink to this:

http://faithpromotingrumor.com/2017/05/ ... ars-later/

To wit (from the link - you must click on it to understand why it was linked), “In short, he published a book called The Lost Teachings of Jesus on the Sacred Place of Women. The basis of the book was a nineteenth-century forgery called the Unknown Life of Jesus. The fact of forgery was glossed over in the book, to say nothing of the sensational and entirely misleading title.” The emphasis is mine. This led me to look at the Amazon reviews of the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IX ... tkin_p1_i2

So. There you go. Given the context of it being outed as based on a fraud I found the comments to be more sad than funny.

On a side note, this was posted on Faith-Promoting Rumor in 2019:

Sources confirm that Alonzo Gaskill’s book, The Lost Teachings of Jesus on the Sacred Place of Women, is for sale again at the BYU bookstore in Provo — after it was publicly exposed as a deception more than five years back, after Deseret Book stopped selling it, and after Gaskill himself was forced to say sorry or whatever. As of press time, there were about a dozen copies on display for Education Week. If you hurry, you could still snag one to add to your shelf of modern fiction masquerading as ancient scripture.

- Doc

[Dr. Shades]

Thank you for the snark, but the second link alone sans commentary would've been entirely sufficient.