John Gee leaves bizarre message as he steps down from editorship, also his inappropriate Ritner review

[Dr Moore]

Hmmm. Well, I may be persuaded over time, but as of now I am not. Dialogue is not an Egyptology journal; it is a “Mormon thought” journal that is in itself a tiny fish tank. What the community of Mormons who read it thinks or mistakenly believes about Egyptology is not going to be fatal to the discipline.

Why isn’t Dialogue the most perfect journal on earth to set the record straight? A far greater number of Mormons care about Egyptology than all of the Egyptologists in the world combined. And they don’t read the scholarly journals — they all get their information from Gee and his butchered abuses of the field. If your job is to educate those who care about Egyptology about how Egyptologists really think about Egyptology, and you see a certain Egyptologist absolutely making a mess of Egyptology in the pursuit of lifting his chosen religion, then maximum impact is had by submitting a paper to Dialogue.

Also, why does it matter if Gee was a former student or not. One gets the sense that all Egyptologists are related, like the Kevin Bacon rule reduced to a degree of “1”.

[Dr Moore]

With regard to the articles by my former student John Gee, I am constrained to note that unlike the interaction between Baer and Nibley, and the practice of all my other Egyptology students, Gee never chose to share drafts of his publications with me to elicit scholarly criticism so that I have encountered these only recently. It must be understood that in these apologetic writings Gee's opinions do not necessarily reflect my own nor the standards of Egyptological proof that I required at Yale or Chicago.

That's not said to illustrate a bias against the Mormon religion, but rather a convincing argument that the current Mormon research is dead wrong.

My take exactly. The article was almost entirely factual and neutral. His brief discussion of Gee as in the above achieved a clarifying point for those who may have been confused. I can see the process rebuke of Gee here, same as you, but as we Mormons say, “love the sinner, despise the sin.”

What is the realistic alternative for Ritner? Just say nothing and hope for the best, while one of the few credentialed PhDs in a field he leads goes up and down the streets like a pied piper, convincing masses of people 100 or 1000 or maybe 10000 times greater than any other audience that the whole of Egyptology says something that it categorically does not say?

Ritner could have justifiably gone after Gee with a far harsher tone — such as a public accusation of malpractice. Which he has since done, but only after what, 20 years of Gee’s belligerence?

[Physics Guy]

If it is a common practice for former students to run their papers by their old advisors for comments, then Ritner may have felt, with some reason, that Gee’s publications were trading on an implicit imprimatur from Ritner, because people would assume that Ritner had approved them when in fact he hadn’t seen them.

And while I would guess it’s unlikely that the world’s small band of professional Egyptologists would really be swayed or even confused by one rogue scholar, no matter whose student he had been, maybe Dr Moore has a point that Gee could potentially reach a much larger lay audience, among Mormons hungry for apologetics, than most Egyptologists can hope to capture in these doldrum decades so long after Tutankhamen, when more people know about Pyramid Power than about pyramid builders.

The ivory tower isn’t supposed to be completely windowless. Scholars are supposed to care what the general populace thinks of their subjects.

On the other hand I agree that it’s perverse and unnatural for a Doktorvater to be punching down on a former student. None of my own former students has continued in academic science, so there’s not much I can do to support them in their current careers, but I’d have to have pretty strong reason to think they were doing something pretty bad before I felt it was my job to get in their way. It would be almost like testifying against a family member.

In the ideal world as I imagine it, if one of the students of a distinguished professor went wacko, what would happen is that another former student would do the dirty work and allow the advisor to keep sad and dignified silence. Why did this not happen here?

[Kishkumen]

Why isn’t Dialogue the most perfect journal on earth to set the record straight? A far greater number of Mormons care about Egyptology than all of the Egyptologists in the world combined. And they don’t read the scholarly journals — they all get their information from Gee and his butchered abuses of the field. If your job is to educate those who care about Egyptology about how Egyptologists really think about Egyptology, and you see a certain Egyptologist absolutely making a mess of Egyptology in the pursuit of lifting his chosen religion, then maximum impact is had by submitting a paper to Dialogue.

Also, why does it matter if Gee was a former student or not. One gets the sense that all Egyptologists are related, like the Kevin Bacon rule reduced to a degree of “1”.

If these Egyptology-interested Mormons are *only* getting their information from Gee, then how interested in Egyptology are they really? Egyptology is a helluvalot bigger than the Book of Abraham. Gee has written precious little about the broader subject in an approachable format. Many people have written popular Egyptological books and magazine articles. The Book of Abraham is such a narrow topic and its discussion in Mormon circles is so niche that I could easily see compartmentalizing the errors of Gee and still coming away with a reasonably acceptable popular understanding of the topic, if one bothers to read more widely. Those who really are interested in Egyptology will do so.

Religions are not fact-based phenomena. The Hebrew Bible is not an accurate retelling of the ancient history of Palestine. The New Testament is often at best a creative reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Jews can get angry with Christians for their heretical beliefs that distort Judaism, and archaeologists and geologists can tell you that events recounted in the Hebrew Bible probably never happened. Yet millions of people believe these distorted claims, and the world keeps turning.

I can tell you that there are many more diplomatic ways of dealing with the Egyptological problems in the Book of Abraham than appearing in anti-Mormon videos produced by Evangelical Christians. So, yes, it is one thing to punch down at your former student, and something completely different, and much worse, to insert yourself into one side of a religious debate when ostensibly you don’t have a dog in that fight.

And let’s be clear about our friend Professor Jenkins. He can make fun of Hamblin’s dumb arguments regarding the Book of Mormon, and we lap it up, but he does so as a Christian who is very much biased and partisan. When push comes to shove, there is nothing inherently rational in believing that Jesus of Nazareth is God and always has been, or that he rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds of people. Jenkins was being a Christian bully in picking on Mormon claims, whether he can see that or not.

I dislike bad apologetics as much as the next person, and unfortunately criticisms of them rarely come hermetically sealed in a bath of purity and goodness. Everyone has an agenda and biases, even otherwise great gentlemen and scholars such as Professors Ritner and Jenkins. I have enjoyed and profited from what they have said, but I also recognize that their motives are complicated, and I think we should not lose sight of that. I stand by my assessment of the problems with their actions, acknowledging at the same time that I listened to and read every word, often enjoying myself immensely.

On the other hand, I see this through the lens of Mormonism’s complicated place in American history and culture. Anti-Mormonism is not only real but also palpable. I saw it very clearly on my mission, when Romney ran for president, and when members of a professional scholarly organization I belong to organized a boycott of BYU in protest of the LDS Church’s doctrines and policies regarding gender. In the latter case, the visceral anti-Mormon hatred came out in discussions about the boycott, as well as the singling out of a Mormon institution, when Catholic and Protestant institutions with similar policies were left alone.

Protestant ideology in America operates something like white supremacy. Other religions, even Catholics, are often marginalized and attacked. I find the whole thing extremely disgusting and disturbing. When we join hands with those who, consciously or not, are also holding hands with those who hate Mormonism and our Mormon ancestors in a truly bigoted fashion, that’s a problem. It is for me, anyway, and I will remark about it.

[Lem]

So Jenkins and Ritner are bigoted Mormonism haters whose factual writings, in response to Mormons who are incorrectly stating facts, are done to bully Mormons. An interesting position to take, especially in light of how Mormon apologists consistently ask for scholarly responses. And when they get those responses, which point out and disagree with factual errors, it is considered bullying and bigotry?

As a fellow academic, I couldn't disagree more. Responding with facts that correct incorrect statements is not bigotry and certainly not bullying. Considering the relatively calm nature of these two professionals' responses in the face of the rabid slathering and character defamation regularly committed by certain mopologists, it is even more obvious.

[Physics Guy]

The Book of Abraham is such a narrow topic and its discussion in Mormon circles is so niche that I could easily see compartmentalizing the errors of Gee and still coming away with a reasonably acceptable popular understanding of the topic, if one bothers to read more widely. Those who really are interested in Egyptology will do so.

That's probably true and maybe it does point to the better way for Egyptology to react to John Gee. But does an academic discipline only care about members of the general public who care enough to read widely? I like this question but don't know how to answer it myself. On the one hand I'm sure there are plenty of people out there with crackpot notions of physics who are unwilling to learn anything better, and I am not going to lose any sleep over them. They're unlikely to do any harm—their death rays will not work—and I don't feel that I owe it to them to drag them in chains to enlightenment. On the other hand, though, there may be a lot of people who are sadly ignorant about things that they could understand better, and who may not be heroic truth seekers but who would be willing to pay at least a bit of attention in order to learn, if only something that made any real sense would reach them in their language. I can see a sort of duty to try to reach those kind of people. I'm not sure I can completely wash my hands of everyone except those who are willing to read many books.

And let’s be clear about our friend Professor Jenkins. He can make fun of Hamblin’s dumb arguments regarding the Book of Mormon, and we lap it up, but he does so as a Christian who is very much biased and partisan. When push comes to shove, there is nothing inherently rational in believing that Jesus of Nazareth is God and always has been, or that he rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds of people. Jenkins was being a Christian bully in picking on Mormon claims, whether he can see that or not.

Jenkins did seem to me to be a stone thrower who only lived in a house of somewhat thicker glass. But I didn't think I noticed much sectarian edge to his statements in his debate with Hamblin. And I don't think we can blame people for arguing topics on which they themselves hold strong views.

What is the difference from a historian's viewpoint between attributing one-time miracles to legendary figures, and inventing entire cultures wholesale? That seems to me to be the difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. It may be a difference of degree rather than of kind but it's a big degree difference, and I think it might be enough of a difference to make the difference between whether a historian needs to do something to teach against a popular pseudo-history or whether he or she can just shrug and let believers believe.

Anti-Mormonism is not only real but also palpable. I saw it very clearly on my mission, when Romney ran for president, and when members of a professional scholarly organization I belong to organized a boycott of BYU in protest of the LDS Church’s doctrines and policies regarding gender. In the latter case, the visceral anti-Mormon hatred came out in discussions about the boycott, as well as the singling out of a Mormon institution, when Catholic and Protestant institutions with similar policies were left alone.

Protestant ideology in America operates something like white supremacy. Other religions, even Catholics, are often marginalized and attacked. I find the whole thing extremely disgusting and disturbing. When we join hands with those who, consciously or not, are also holding hands with those who hate Mormonism and our Mormon ancestors in a truly bigoted fashion, that’s a problem.

Even if I suspect that Mormon sins against history are graver than Christian ones, I'm appalled if other denominational schools are getting away with things for which BYU draws strong fire. I'm not American but from what I've seen I can imagine there may well be something to the claim that Protestantism in America has a white-like privileged status. I haven't heard the acronym WASP for a while but it was a thing once.

[Lem]

And let’s be clear about our friend Professor Jenkins. He can make fun of Hamblin’s dumb arguments regarding the Book of Mormon, and we lap it up, but he does so as a Christian who is very much biased and partisan. When push comes to shove, there is nothing inherently rational in believing that Jesus of Nazareth is God and always has been, or that he rose from the dead and was seen by hundreds of people. Jenkins was being a Christian bully in picking on Mormon claims, whether he can see that or not.

Jenkins did seem to me to be a stone thrower who only lived in a house of somewhat thicker glass. But I didn't think I noticed much sectarian edge to his statements in his debate with Hamblin. And I don't think we can blame people for arguing topics on which they themselves hold strong views. What is the difference from a historian's viewpoint between attributing one-time miracles to legendary figures, and inventing entire cultures wholesale? That seems to me to be the difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. It may be a difference of degree rather than of kind but it's a big degree difference, and I think it might be enough of a difference to make the difference between whether a historian needs to do something to teach against a popular pseudo-history or whether he or she can just shrug and let believers believe.

I would have to disagree that Jenkins treated it as a matter of degree, even a very large degree. Jenkins was very straightforward about separating provable fact from faith-based belief in his comments. He mentioned this multiple times, always asserting that his disagreements were with Hamblin's attempts to associate provable, historical fact with various aspects of the Book of Mormon story. Several times, he said that he had no issues with Mormonism's faith based claims, but felt obligated to respond when pseudo-science was invoked as proof.

[Kishkumen]

That's probably true and maybe it does point to the better way for Egyptology to react to John Gee. But does an academic discipline only care about members of the general public who care enough to read widely?

I would assume not, but perhaps a better way of reaching the public is to write for the public on Egyptology more broadly defined and not to pick apart the Egyptian translations of fellow scholars in a backwater journal. Unless your readers read Egyptian too, what are they going to get from Ritner saying Nibley translated something incorrectly? Will they really benefit from that? All they will know is that scholar A says he is better at translating Egyptian than scholar B. Which of the readers of Dialogue learned better Egyptian because Ritner put the smackdown in Nibley's translations?

On the other hand, though, there may be a lot of people who are sadly ignorant about things that they could understand better, and who may not be heroic truth seekers but who would be willing to pay at least a bit of attention in order to learn, if only something that made any real sense would reach them in their language. I can see a sort of duty to try to reach those kind of people. I'm not sure I can completely wash my hands of everyone except those who are willing to read many books.

Many books? How about a couple of books, or a bunch of articles in Archaeology magazine? There has to be a nice middle ground between correcting Nibley's Egyptian in front of Mormons because he and Gee pissed you off and informing the public. I really don't think many people benefited from Ritner making a point of correcting Nibley and Gee, other than seeing that a non-Mormon scholar disagrees with a Mormon scholar about the language of the papyri.

Jenkins did seem to me to be a stone thrower who only lived in a house of somewhat thicker glass. But I didn't think I noticed much sectarian edge to his statements in his debate with Hamblin. And I don't think we can blame people for arguing topics on which they themselves hold strong views.

That's really not all Jenkins is doing. He is a Christian historian working at a sectarian institution who is going online to call the Book of Mormon pseudo-history. That's not a neutral activity. And, yes, he compared his more reliable Christian historical views to the fact-free Book of Mormon story. Now, it is true that Jesus existed whereas Nephi is a construct that Joseph Smith invented, but Jesus is not the Eternal God from before the creation of the world or the resurrected Lord and Savior who will come back to judge the living and the dead because of history. Christianity is not "true" because Jesus existed, and Jenkins really ought not passively to bootstrap this in even an indirect way.

What is the difference from a historian's viewpoint between attributing one-time miracles to legendary figures, and inventing entire cultures wholesale? That seems to me to be the difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. It may be a difference of degree rather than of kind but it's a big degree difference, and I think it might be enough of a difference to make the difference between whether a historian needs to do something to teach against a popular pseudo-history or whether he or she can just shrug and let believers believe.

I think the point is arguable. Is it more damaging to make up a history or to falsify an existing history? Maybe Mountain Meadows Massacre really is much worse than the Crusades and the Holocaust. Ahem.

What I am asking for is consistency, and preferably I would like people who do not have an ax to grind to take up these issues. I won't get that. People generally come to a topic because of a complex set of motivations. I have complex motivations for bringing to our collective attention the fact that Professors Ritner and Jenkins are human beings with human flaws and complex motivations.

I am ready to drop the Book of Mormon as history. I already have, and I did it a long time ago. Is Professor Jenkins ready to drop the resurrection as history? Or can he prove that Jesus Christ floated up to heaven in a cloud of glory with angels gathered around him, or some such? Maybe he already has dropped that as a historical belief. Perhaps he, co-director of Baylor's Program on Historical Studies of Religion in the Institute for Studies of Religion, shares that with all of his students at Baylor. Or maybe not.

Even if I suspect that Mormon sins against history are graver than Christian ones, I'm appalled if other denominational schools are getting away with things for which BYU draws strong fire. I'm not American but from what I've seen I can imagine there may well be something to the claim that Protestantism in America has a white-like privileged status. I haven't heard the acronym WASP for a while but it was a thing once.

My spouse and I have dealt with assholes and friends behaving like assholes our whole lives. Mormon jokes. My spouse being asked during an interview for a clerkship with a FEDERAL JUDGE whether her dad drove a wagon and had a long beard. Believe me, there is plenty of narrow-minded bigotry to go around, and it isn't just un-woke Mormons who follow Mormon apostles who have a problem. Mormons in American culture are only provisionally white and strongly denigrated for their religious views. Yes, Protestantism is the gold standard for mainstream religious belief.

Let me provide another example. I absolutely adore Ron Huggins. He is a fantastic guy. He is also a brilliant and exacting scholar. At the same time, he is deeply prejudiced against Mormonism because he fervently believes that Joseph Smith was influenced by demons.

DEMONS.

I recall how similar beliefs caused mobs of wrathful Christians to desecrate and tear to bits the great temples and statues of the gods of Greco-Roman antiquity. Oh, they said, these things are full of demons so we have to get rid of them. Today you will find mobs in parts of the world that still do this kind of thing. They will kill a person or a family because DEMONS.

Now, I don't think Prof. Huggins would do anything of the sort, but let's not kid ourselves about his obvious rationality or pure motives when he attacks Mormon apologetics. He probably thinks that Daniel Peterson is being influenced by the very same demons that plagued Joseph Smith.

And, on occasion, I get pretty annoyed with Prof. Huggins' motivations for going after this or that in his research. One of his latest things is to demonstrate that the Enneagram has nothing to do with historical Christianity so that he can protect the flock of believers from occult influences. Sorry, but that just rubs me the wrong way. Sure, he is entitled to do it, but my tolerance for this kind of purity test for right belief is admittedly kind of thin. I admit that I have this weakness, and it does impact my reaction to this whole set of issues.

[Physics Guy]

Unless your readers read Egyptian too, what are they going to get from Ritner saying Nibley translated something incorrectly? Will they really benefit from that? All they will know is that scholar A says he is better at translating Egyptian than scholar B. Which of the readers of Dialogue learned better Egyptian because Ritner put the smackdown in Nibley's translations?

Well, this makes sense. I guess for me the analogy would be that if I want to convey some accurate physics to people with good will but limited time, the way to do it is to explain some basic general stuff, not to pick apart some particular crackpot in technical terms that will go over the heads of my supposed target audience anyway. So okay, this does make Ritner's rebuttal to Gee seem more quixotic than educational.

I think I still do agree with Lem, that when Jenkins was arguing with Hamblin he was indeed being fairly consistent, acknowledging that there were things people just took on faith but trying to get Hamblin to stop claiming to have a lot more substance than he did. Not everything can or should be math or physics, but it doesn't follow that all speculations and suppositions are equally valid. I think it's fair for scholars to argue that something has crossed a line and is claiming more legitimacy than it warrants. The people who try to hold that kind of line are likely to have their own debatable propositions that they uphold; people who just have no idea what's involved in weighing plausibility of untestable claims are not the right people for that kind of debate.

I can see, though, that if there's as much anti-Mormon prejudice in academia as you say then it's unseemly to pile on Mormons some more, on issues that aren't even really new to anyone.

[Chap]

Unless your readers read Egyptian too, what are they going to get from Ritner saying Nibley translated something incorrectly? Will they really benefit from that? All they will know is that scholar A says he is better at translating Egyptian than scholar B. Which of the readers of Dialogue learned better Egyptian because Ritner put the smackdown in Nibley's translations?

Well, this makes sense. I guess for me the analogy would be that if I want to convey some accurate physics to people with good will but limited time, the way to do it is to explain some basic general stuff, not to pick apart some particular crackpot in technical terms that will go over the heads of my supposed target audience anyway.

I would like to mention a different aspect of this matter.

It is not unknown in circles with which I have some familiarity for pretty well all of the informed people in the field to be agreed that the work by X on subject Y has grave flaws. But nobody ever comes out and says so, and says why it is so, because not only are there no prizes for writing a 'negative' article, there are even demerits one can be awarded for doing so. (Can we think of anyone who has recently been criticised for 'negative' work? Yes we can!). Meanwhile, the lack of explicit criticism of what experts acknowledge privately to be nonsense confuses people who are trying to understand the field as informed outsiders.

So I'd say it can be seen as a useful act for Ritner to have used some of his time and energy to point out flaws in Nibley's Eyptological work.