Was Nibley a Genius, Scholar, or Crackpot?

[_grayskull]

Note that the non-exclusive sense of "or" is intended here. Here are three criteria, which ones did Hugh Nibley fit? I'd especially be interested in Backyard Professor's take.

Was Nibley a:

1)Genius
2)Scholar
3)Crackpot

1. Yes, in terms of language aptitude and memory it seems this would be the case.

2. No. Or at least, not much past the fact he held a phd. But here's especially where I'd like input.

3. Absolutely.

Again, the three are not exclusive in any way. Isaac Newton was all three. Francis Crick was 1) and 2) and teetered on 3). Richard Feynman was certainly 1) and 2) only. Roger Penrose is all three. There is certainly a trait within some of the great thinkers that puts them at substantial risk of slipping into crackpottery if left unchecked. While we can all get bored with reality, bored genius can assert itself into novel, fascinating, and even convincing ways. I've always thought the noted high IQs of UFO abductees by UFO apologists were evidence against their case, neutral at best, rather than in favor. It's easy to want to overlook, or even apologize for the crackpottery when solid contributions are substantial enough. So I'm here wondering about Nibley's actual contributions.

What was Nibley noted for in the academic world? What work of Nibley's is often quoted by antiquarians in their books and papers? Did his published essays make any kind of dent in the real world of scholarship? From what I've seen, Nibley worked mostly outside of his field, and always with an eye single to making a political or religious statement. Was he a genius like Newton, with oddities, plenty of weird ideas, but also stack of renown contributions, or was he a genius like Immanuel Velikovsky, with a lot of wasted potential and ultimately unrestrained victim of his own imagination? Not being a scholar myself, I have little else to judge Nibley's fruits as a scholar other than by what FARMS put out.

[_CaliforniaKid]

I will not deny Nibley either of the first two titles, but at the same time I think he fits in the third category quite nicely. By the way, Margaret Barker has admitted that an essay by one H. Nibley inspired her to become a student of biblical arcana. No wonder she's a crackpot too.

[_moksha]

Was Nibley a:

1)Genius
2)Scholar
3)Crackpot

I would love to hear Dan Ackroyd, doing his Sgt. Joe Friday of Dragnet imitation, ask these questions.

[_Jersey Girl]

Having read only a few articles written by Hugh Nibley, I'd have to take "genius at misdirection" for 200$, Alex. My opinion so far...

Jersey Girl

[_Ray A]

What was Nibley noted for in the academic world? What work of Nibley's is often quoted by antiquarians in their books and papers? Did his published essays make any kind of dent in the real world of scholarship? From what I've seen, Nibley worked mostly outside of his field, and always with an eye single to making a political or religious statement. Was he a genius like Newton, with oddities, plenty of weird ideas, but also stack of renown contributions, or was he a genius like Immanuel Velikovsky, with a lot of wasted potential and ultimately unrestrained victim of his own imagination? Not being a scholar myself, I have little else to judge Nibley's fruits as a scholar other than by what FARMS put out.

Nibley was published in non-Mormon academic journals. There's no doubting his genius. A non-LDS scholar once heard Nibley recite very lengthy passages of Shakespeare without notes, and said it was "obscene for one man to know so much".
If you want to read what I consider the best biographical sketch of Nibley see Truman Madsen's bio at the beginning of Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless. This will give you a good insight into man and his mind. However, his imagination does run wild in essays like "Strange Ships and Shining Stones", and he is noted for "parallomania". Newton spent more time writing on biblical themes than on physics. He was no less of a "crackpot", if Nibley was one. I prefer the word "eccentric". Throughout history many "crackpots" have made revolutionary discoveries, because they were unafraid to go beyond "the citadel of science", as Wilson called it.

Why are the 'skeptic' authors wrong? Let's look at the details. Their argument with the crackpots starts when, over and over again, particular skeptical researchers dismiss extraordinary claims without first inspecting the evidence. They justify their refusal to inspect evidence in various ways. Here are a few, some made as arguments, others as unspoken assumptions:

* If a new theory or observation is obviously crazy or impossible, we should distrust the evidence which supports it. Evidence which contradicts well known theory is almost certainly wrong, and only VERY STRONG evidence should be accepted. After all, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

* Hundreds of scientists hurl ridicule at this theory, and history shows that the concensus opinion of a large group of scientists is invariably trustworthy.

* Science only grows, it does not backtrack. Therefore if a new discovery suggests that modern science has made an extremely major and unnoticed mistake, and that massive backtracking is required, then that discovery is wrong.

* Modern science is nearly complete, there are no more gigantic scientific revolutions possible, so if the new discovery was real, scientists would already know about it.

* Inspecting the details of a crazy claim is distasteful, and it's a big waste of time. Crazy claims are always just what they seem, and in this case we can safely judge a book by its cover, with no need to read one bit of it.

http://amasci.com/freenrg/arrhenus.html

[_dartagnan]

In many ways Nibley was all of the above.

But he is practically worshipped in Mormon circles in a manner that is not prportionate with his contributions as a Mormon scholar. So many of this theories have been shot to hell, as to make him look like a desperate apologist whose only interest was apologetics. The apologetic overtones of his works are what turned off most scholars who would otherwise recommend him as an authority.

[_truth dancer]

Nibley was brilliant, no question.

A scholar... sort of.

Eccentric? Certainly.

Unfortuantely he used his incredible brain to come up with oftimes nonsensical and unsupported theories.

It is as if he had the outcome in his mind and came up with all sorts of things to prove his theory but the theory was completely incorrect to start with.

I'm not just talking about LDS teachings here...

For example, If I recall correctly, he had this idea that language came to earth from God in a perfect form (The Adamic language) and disintigrated over the years (or something like this... its been a while).

I don't think there is a linguist in the world who would come up with such a theory let alone try to find support for it.

But, it seems to me one could come up with any nonsensical theory and find something that would sort of give "evidence" for it, regardless of how nonsensical the "evidence".

At one time I was such a fan of Nibley... until I went to the library (still a believer and prior to the net), and started looking up some of his references and assumptions and discovered he was either completely delusional, or out of touch with reality, or disingenuous...

Today, I think he was just really out of touch with reality.... brilliant as he was.

~dancer~

[_christopher]

How about a wasted genius.

That he was smarter than the average bear, I don't think you will find much disagreement. The problem is the product he chose to spend the majority of his life on. If he had applied all of that brain power to true history or linguistics or probably most anything that fancied him, think of what he could have done. What a waste of a mind.


Chris <><

[_Mercury]

Having read only a few articles written by Hugh Nibley, I'd have to take "genius at misdirection" for 200$, Alex. My opinion so far...

Jersey Girl

Nibley was the apologist prophet. I bet if he was just a little bit more tossed up by the task to prove the Mormon god existed he would have blown his brains out.

He delivered an exercise in comparative mythology.

He's like a tolkein literary scholar drawing threads to germany/mordor except theres more value in the Tolkien fantasy world...like an enjoyable story and realistic characters.

Joes characters seem like a post pubescent country boys masturbation fantasy, his stories worse than some of the plots I created after smoking up the Ganj.

[_Gazelam]

In searching through online obituaries I came across this one that offers insights from someone who studied under him.

Hugh Nibley 1910-2005
Renowned LDS scholar, Hugh W. Nibley, passed away Thursday at the age of 94. He made an incalculable contribution to LDS scholarship. FARMS is expected to publish his magnum opus on Abraham facsimile No. 2, One Eternal Round, which he did not finish in his lifetime.

I took Nibley's Pearl of Great Price class twice, once for credit and once I attended with my wife who was taking it for credit. Some classmates regularly taped his lectures (which my father once described as trying to take a drink from a fire hose -- read his foreword in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless), so there were often two or three tape recorders on the table at the front of the classroom. Nibley was completely oblivious to them. During one lecture, he tripped over the electrical cord of one of the machines, and it crashed to the floor breaking into several pieces. Nibley didn't even pause, but simply continued on giving his lecture.

I also had the opportunity to check his footnotes for "Treasures in the Heavens" -- there were more pages of footnotes than pages of the essay itself -- before it was published in Old Testament and Related Studies (the first volume in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley series published by FARMS). It was a daunting task because the sources were in a dozen languages: German, French, Greek, Latin, Coptic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Italian. It was made easier because Nibley's pencil notes (!) in the books in the BYU Library he had used as his sources often guided me to the quotes. I relied heavily on senior scholars to confirm Nibley's translations. But often, I simply had to consult with Nibley himself.

Given his incredible gifts and the cosmic sweep of his scholarship, the man himself was completely unpretentious. I was gratified that he remembered me and greeted me by name whenever we passed on campus.

Well fought the fight, good soldier. "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

Source:http://oddbits3.blogspot.com/2005/02/hugh-nibley-1910-2005.html