Hugh Nibley was a fool, come watch

[_The Nehor]

Nibley was brilliant but he had a marked tendency to ramble off-topic when speaking. I find him fun to listen to. Some don't.

[_beastie]

There is no evidence supporting the existence of horses during the Book of Mormon time period in the Americas.

LDS Book of Mormon apologists are well aware of this fact, and it is why they have attempted to delve into theories that rely on translation errors.

Eager believers regularly provide "evidence" of horses, but this evidence has, thus far, shown to be either outright hoaxes, or wishful thinking.

Yes, there are nonLDS who also engage in this flight of fancy, for whatever reason, such as Barry Fell, but their evidences are as equally problematic as what LDS believers provide.

http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/index.php/Horses

[_Coggins7]

Here is what Mosser and Owen, to serious critics of the LDS church, say about Nibley:


Hugh Nibley: The Father of Mormon Scholarly Apologetics

Hugh Nibley is without question the pioneer of LDS scholarship and apologetics. Since earning his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1939, Nibley has produced a seemingly endless stream of books and articles covering a dauntingly vast array of subject matter. Whether writing on Patristics, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the apocrypha, the culture of the Ancient Near East or Mormonism, he demonstrates an impressive command of the original languages, primary texts and secondary literature. He has set a standard which younger LDS intellectuals are hard pressed to follow. There is not room here for anything approaching an exhaustive examination of Nibley's works.(1) We must confess with Truman Madsen, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religion at Brigham Young University: "To those who know him best, and least, Hugh W. Nibley is a prodigy, an enigma, and a symbol."(2)

The few evangelicals who are aware of Hugh Nibley often dismiss him as a fraud or pseudo-scholar. Those who would like to quickly dismiss his writings would do well to heed Madsen's warning: "Ill-wishing critics have suspected over the years that Nibley is wrenching his sources, hiding behind his footnotes, and reading into antique languages what no responsible scholar would every read out. Unfortunately, few have the tools to do the checking."(3) The bulk of Nibley's work has gone unchallenged by evangelicals despite the fact that he has been publishing relevant material since 1946. Nibley's attitude toward evangelicals: "We need more anti-Mormon books. They keep us on our toes."(4)

No doubt there are flaws in Nibley's work, but most counter-cultists do not have the tools to demonstrate this. Few have tried.(5) It is beyond the scope of this paper to critique Nibley's methodology or to describe the breadth of his apologetic.(6) Whatever flaws may exist in his methodology, Nibley is a scholar of high caliber. Many of his more important essays first appeared in academic journals such as the Revue de Qumran, Vigiliae Christianae, Church History, and the Jewish Quarterly Review.(7) Nibley has also received praise from non-LDS scholars such as Jacob Neusner, James Charlesworth, Cyrus Gordon, Raphael Patai and Jacob Milgrom.(8) The former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, George MacRae, once lamented while hearing him lecture, "It is obscene for a man to know that much!"(9) Nibley has not worked in a cloister. It is amazing that few evangelical scholars are aware of his work. In light of the respect Nibley has earned in the non-LDS scholarly world it is more amazing that counter-cultists can so glibly dismiss his work.

The people who are here calling Nibley a "fool" and a "fraud" are people who, by the vast bulk of what they have posted in public in this forum (and no doubt in others) have already demonstrated themselves to be so far beneath Nibley educationally and intellectually as to make their criticisms of him little more than exercises in anti-Mormon self parody.

To make a fool of oneself now and then is inevitable. To do it endlessly and compulsively is pathological.

[_Coggins7]

Compare the attituteds of a variety of serious scholars of Religion and biblical criticism with many of the attitudes and predjudices expressed here and in other typical anti and exmo forums:

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences/
2001_Scholarship_in_Mormonism_and_Mormonism_in_Scholarship.html


I

n June 1961, Hugh Nibley's article "The Passing of the Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme" was published in the non-LDS scholarly journal Church History.5 Though he did not discuss the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the topic of the paper--evidences for the great apostasy--clearly came from Nibley's own religious beliefs. Still, he supported his ideas by referring to early Christian writings. Six months later, the journal published a letter from Hans J. Hillebrand6 (who rejected Nibley's thesis), along with a response to Hillebrand and a defense of Nibley's approach if not his conclusions from one of the journal's editors, Robert M. Grant.7 Nearly a decade later, William A. Clebsch discussed Nibley's thesis, noting his "Mormon viewpoint," and the debate that ensued.8 Somehow, it seems highly significant that a topic based on Latter-day Saint beliefs was aired in a scholarly debate.9

In 1966 a little-known critic of the LDS Church wrote a series of inflammatory letters designed to elicit negative comments about the Book of Abraham from prominent Near Eastern scholars. In his response, William F. Albright of Johns Hopkins University expressed doubts that Joseph Smith could have learned Egyptian from any early nineteenth century sources. Explaining that he was a Protestant and hence not a believer in the Book of Mormon, he observed, "It is all the more surprising that there are two Egyptian names, Paanch [Paanchi] and Pahor(an) which appear in the Book of Mormon in close connection with a reference to the original language being 'Reformed Egyptian.'" Puzzled at the existence of such names in a book published by Joseph Smith in 1830, Albright vaguely suggested that the young Mormon leader was some kind of "religious genius"10 and defended the honesty of Joseph Smith and the good name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I have to believe that these comments reflect the fact that Albright was more than superficially acquainted with the Book of Mormon, even if he was not a believer.

In the spring of 1978, the Religious Studies Center of Brigham Young University sponsored a symposium to which a number of non-LDS scholars were invited to discuss topics of special interest to Latter-day Saints. The papers presented at the symposium were assembled by Truman G. Madsen and published in a book entitled Reflections on Mormonism: Judaeo-Christian Parallels.13 Several of the papers discussed topics drawn from the Book of Mormon and other unique LDS scriptures. David Winston of the University of California (Berkeley) discussed "Preexistence in Hellenic, Judaic and Mormon Sources." Krister Stendahl of the Harvard Divinity School discussed "The Sermon on the Mount and Third Nephi." Edmond LaB. Cherbonnier of Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut) spoke "In Defense of Anthropomorphism." John Dillenberger, President of Hartford Seminary Foundation, compared "Grace and Works in Martin Luther and Joseph Smith." Ernst W. Benz of the University of Marburg titled his presentation "Imago Dei: Man in the Image of God." James H. Charlesworth of Duke University presented a paper entitled "Messianism in the Pseudepigrapha and the Book of Mormon."

A few years after this conclave, Doubleday published Charlesworth's The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (1985), the dust jacket of which states that "Scholars, Bible students, professionals of all religious groups and denominations, and lay people--indeed, all those who can be signified as 'People of the Book,' Christians, Jews, Mormons, Muslims--will be interested in these translations."14

Truman Madsen hosted a second conference with LDS and non-LDS scholars discussing ancient temples, a topic that holds great interest for Latter-day Saints. This conference, too, resulted in a book.15

Meanwhile, in 1981, John W. Welch edited a book entitled Chiasmus in Antiquity, which contained articles by a number of non-LDS scholars, including Yehuda T. Radday of the University of Haifa, Bezalel Porten and Jonah Fraenkel of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Wilfred G. E. Watson of Trinity College, University of Dublin. The book, published in Germany, included Welch's article "Chiasmus in the Book of Mormon."16 The inclusion of this article in a collection of chiasmus studies by renowned scholars firmly established the Book of Mormon as a proper topic of discussion in scholarly publications. In his preface to the book, David Noel Freedman then of the University of Michigan (now at the University of California San Diego) wrote, "The editor is to be commended for his catholicity and courage and for his own original contributions in several domains including a unique treatment of the Book of Mormon."17

In 1981, while serving as chair of the annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures and Allied Fields, I invited Raphael Patai of Princeton University to speak at the symposium on the subject of his book The Hebrew Goddess (1968), in which he suggested that at least some Jews in ancient times believed God was married. Patai expressed surprise that Latter-day Saints should be interested in the topic, and when I explained our concepts of God and eternal marriage, he asked that I send him some materials, which I did. His presentation at the symposium was well received, and Patai later returned to Provo for other presentations.

In some of his subsequent books, Patai drew on the Book of Mormon. For example, in The Jewish Alchemists: A History and Source Book, a note to the story of thirteenth-century French alchemist Nicolas Flamel reads, "The idea that sacred texts were originally inscribed on metal tablets recurs in the Mormon belief that the Book of Mormon came down inscribed on gold tablets. Important documents were in fact inscribed on metal tablets and preserved in stone or marble boxes in Mesopotamia, Egypt, etc."18 The note references an article by LDS scholar H. Curtis Wright in a book published by FARMS19 (and to which Patai and other non-LDS scholars contributed), and he thanked one of the editors of that book, John M. Lundquist, for bringing this information to his attention.

Patai credited Lundquist for breaking the "writer's block" that enabled him to complete his book The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times, published by Princeton University in 1998. In the Preface, Patai wrote:

Then, in the late 1980s, I was asked by my friend Dr. John M. Lundquist, head of the Oriental Division of the New York Public Library, to contribute a paper to the Festschrift he, together with Dr. Stephen D. Ricks of Brigham Young University, planned to publish in honor of the eightieth birthday of Hugh W. Nibley. Thinking about what would be most suitable for a collection of essays in honor of an outstanding Mormon scholar, and knowing that according to the traditions of the Mormons their ancestors [sic] sailed to America from the Land of Israel about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, I felt that a paper discussing some aspect of Jewish seafaring in ancient times would be most appropriate. So I went back to the seafaring typescript, and reworked the chapter that dealt with Rabbinic legal provisions related to seafaring. It was published in volume one of the Nibley Festschrift in 1990, and is reprinted here in a slightly changed format as Chapter 10.20

Referring to the first sailors to leave the Mediterranean Sea and enter the Atlantic Ocean, Patai wrote:

This daring feet of striking out into unknown waters is dwarfed by what the Mormon tradition attributes to a group of Jews who lived in the days of King Zedekiah in Jerusalem, that is, in the early sixth century BCE (the same time in which the Phocaean skippers were supposed to have sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar). According to Mormon tradition, their venture into unknown waters took place in the year 589 BCE, that is, three years before the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and it was thanks to this extraordinary feat that the American continent was populated by a remnant of biblical Israel.

In friendly response to my request, Dr. John M. Lundquist has summarized for this volume the Mormon version of the origins of the Mormons [sic] from sixty[sic]-century BCE Palestine, at which period, according to the Mormon tradition [sic], the biblical Hebrews had a highly developed seafaring trade (see Appendix).21

The appendix by Lundquist is entitled "Biblical Seafaring and the Book of Mormon," and the volume's title page attributes the authorship to "Raphael Patai With Contributions by James Hornell and John M. Lundquist." Counting references in Lundquist's appendix, Patai's book mentions seven books published by FARMS and Deseret Book, of which five are about the Book of Mormon.

Another Jewish scholar who has dealt with LDS topics is Jacob Neusner, who has been an occasional speaker at BYU. His article, "Conversations in Nauvoo on the Corporeality of God," appeared in BYU Studies 36/1 (l996-97). David L. Paulsen, a prominent LDS philosopher teaching at BYU, has made a reputation for introducing LDS views of God into the realm of general scholarship. In 1975, he earned a PhD from the University of Michigan, with a dissertation entitled "Comparative Coherency of Mormon (finitistic) and Classical Theism." A decade and a half later, his article "Must God Be Incorporeal?" was published in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers.22

In 1990, Paulsen's article "Early Christian Belief in a Corporeal Deity: Origen and Augustine as Reluctant Witnesses," was published in the prestigious Harvard Theological Review.23 Kim Paffenroth took exception to his views and three years later published, in the same review, "Paulsen on Augustine: An Incorporeal or Nonanthropomorphic God?", to which Paulsen was allowed to give a "Reply to Kim Paffenroth's Comment" in the same issue.24

Another scholar whose LDS view of God and godhood influenced his research is Keith E. Norman. His 1980 Duke University PhD dissertation was entitled "Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology." The dissertation was published in the FARMS Occasional Papers series in 2001.

The concept of an apostasy in the early Christian Church was discussed by BYU professor C. Wilfred Griggs in his book Early Egyptian Christianity: From its Origins to 451 C.E. (Coptic Studies Series No. 2; New York: E. J. Brill, 1990). The book received mixed reviews from the non-LDS scholarly world, but some non-LDS scholars have praised his work.25

In recent years, Book of Mormon topics have been discussed in regional and national meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). At the 1997 national meeting, Eric G. Hansen gave a paper on "The Egyptian 'Opening of the Mouth' Ritual in the Book of Mormon."26 Angela Crowell has presented three papers at meetings of the Central States regional meetings of SBL.27 In the Spring of 1988, she presented a paper entitled "Biblical Hebrew Poetry in the Book of Mormon." A year later, she read a paper based on her MA thesis topic, "A Comparative Study of Biblical Hebrew Sentence Structure in the Old Testament and in the Book of Mormon." After the session, she was approached by a professor/rabbi who told her that he had taught a class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City on the Book of Mormon. In April 1992, Crowell presented a paper entitled, "A Comparative Reading of Homiletic and Narrative Midrash in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon."

In the late 1990s, Macmillan, one of the nation's foremost publishers, approached BYU about the possibility of publishing an Encyclopedia of Mormonism. Daniel H. Ludlow, former dean of religion at BYU, was asked to head the project, in association with other BYU faculty members, and the encyclopedia was published in 1992. A number of LDS scholars contributed articles for the project.

Terryl Givens, an LDS professor at the University of Richmond, made history in 1997 when his history of anti-Mormonism, The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, was published by Oxford University Press.28 Oxford will also publish his Out of the Dust: Saints, Scholars, Skeptics, and the Book of Mormon, which is a serious look at the Book of Mormon and its skeptics, along with a survey of the scholarly work being done in regard to it.

In addition to these overtly LDS topics being discussed in scholarly works issued by non-LDS publishers, there have been other, more subtle ways in which LDS scholarly research has been noted. In 1982, I published an article entitled "Egyptian Etymologies for Biblical Religious Paraphernalia," in one of the volumes of Scripta Hierosolymitana, the official publication of the Hebrew University, in which I footnoted one of BYU professor Hugh Nibley's publications on the Book of Abraham.29 The same volume included an article by another Latter-day Saint, Benjamin Urrutia, whose article on the Egyptian opening-of-the-mouth ceremony also footnoted Nibley. More recently, Daniel C. Peterson footnoted several FARMS publications in his article on "Muhammad" in an anthology edited by two noted non-LDS scholars.30

Sometimes, LDS scholars have gained the respect of non-LDS scholars with whom they have worked or studied. I can't help but think that Stephen E. Robinson and John W. Welch made a good impression on James H. Charlesworth while they were studying at Duke University, since Charlesworth has come to speak several times on the BYU campus, even on Book of Mormon topics. Donald W. Parry and others have clearly had a positive effect on a number of non-LDS scholars working on the Dead Sea Scrolls. At least two professors I knew while I was a student at the Hebrew University were so impressed with the Book of Mormon that, while they didn't become members of the Church, they became convinced that the Nephite record was an authentic ancient text.

This brings me back to my recent trip to Israel. It was not the first time the Book of Mormon has been discussed in a prestigious scholarly forum and I sincerely hope that it will not be the last. Some of those who heard my presentation gave me additional suggestions for Hebrew etymologies for Book of Mormon names. One of the speakers drew our attention to another attestation of the Hebrew name Sariah (the name of Lehi's wife) in a Jewish text of the fourth century B.C. found in the Bosphorus region and mentioned only in a Russian publication.

So where do we go from here? I have other topics in mind that I believe will interest at least some non-LDS scholars, and I suspect that I am not alone in this. I plan, for example, to revisit my "King Benjamin and the Feast of Tabernacles" and update it for a Festschrift to be published in Israel next year in honor of a professor whose studies have specialized in Jewish festivals.

It is my earnest hope that we can convince our LDS colleagues that there are open-minded non-LDS scholars out there who would be willing to include scholarly studies on LDS scriptures and beliefs in their journals and books. In this, I have to concur with Gordon C. Thomasson, who once said that we believers should approach studies of the Book of Mormon with the a priori assumption that it is an authentic ancient text and that, moreover, the Book of Mormon can sometimes help elucidate the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts and archaeological finds. As we shall learn in some of the presentations being made at this conference, the volume of evidence for the Book of Mormon continues to increase. To be sure, we need to share that information with Latter-day Saints, but I believe the time is ripe to take this research to the world of non-LDS scholarship.

[_Ray A]

There is no evidence supporting the existence of horses during the Book of Mormon time period in the Americas.

LDS Book of Mormon apologists are well aware of this fact, and it is why they have attempted to delve into theories that rely on translation errors.

Eager believers regularly provide "evidence" of horses, but this evidence has, thus far, shown to be either outright hoaxes, or wishful thinking.

Yes, there are nonLDS who also engage in this flight of fancy, for whatever reason, such as Barry Fell, but their evidences are as equally problematic as what LDS believers provide.

http://zarahemlacitylimits.com/wiki/index.php/Horses

I only had a quick read of your site, but found no mention of the ideas of Yuri Kuchinsky: http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/tran/thor.htm

If you have mentioned him, then my apology. I'll go through the "horse" entry in more detail later. Now I realise that Kuchinsky is considered another "wacko" because he doesn't follow the mainstream academic "establishment", but I also understand he's prolific on the Internet. Maybe I could email him? I would be interested, if he's inclined, to see some dialogue between the two of you. That is, if you, and he, would be up to this (in a new thread of course. I could link him to your page as well to give him some idea).

Kuchinsky has indeed written about some "strange things":

http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/index.html

http://www.globalserve.net/~yuku/ind-jn.htm

And I guess this immediately puts him in the "wacko" basket.

[_Chap]

Hello Coggins.

(a) Have you viewed the seminar referenced in the OP?

(b) Did you think it was, well, a good example of serious discussion of what Nibley himself said was an important objection to the Book of Mormon?

I notice you are not saying anything about that.

[_beastie]

Ray,

No, I have not mentioned each and every individual who asserts there is evidence of the horse during the Book of Mormon time periods. Here is a useful rule of thumb: the beauty of science (and logic) is that self correction is an inherent part of the system. So if an individual makes a claim completely contrary to what mainstream experts assert, it is not necessary to outright disregard the contrary claim, but it is wise to approach the claim with at least a modicum of skepticism. This is what I find normally lacking in Book of Mormon believers who provide links to sites such as Yuri Kuchinsky's or the LDS equivalent, Chapman. You need to take the time to try and find evidence that contradicts Yuri Kuchinsky's claims.

For example, his Wisconsin horse "evidence" is another known hoax:

http://archaeology.about.com/od/frauds/ ... r_lake.htm



This report that debunks this claim is the first hit on a google search for "spencer lake + horses".

As far as I'm concerned, when an individual offers "evidence" that can be demonstrated to be a known hoax fairly easily has no credibility.

[_Gazelam]

What is your opinion of the horseman featured on newspaper rock?

[_beastie]

My opinion is that the horse carvings are of post-hispanic dating. Even Jeff Lindsay, who is extremely eager for Book of Mormon evidence, admits as much in his update:

There is a famous slab of stone with ancient petroglyphs there called "Newspaper Rock." The carvings on the rock date from roughly 100 A.D. to 1500 A.D., overlapping into the post-Spanish period. There are many carvings that may have been made over the centuries, but right in the middle of the rock, one of the most prominent carvings - in the place that I would choose as one of the first places to carve - is a man riding a horse. Was there a big blank spot conveniently left after centuries of carving for a late Indian to carve something he saw from the Spaniards, or was this a more ancient carving depicting something of importance to Indian culture? (Update from 2002: it may be that the central horse carving was inscribed over earlier, older carvings that had become covered with tarnish, as was suggested to me in 2002 in correspondance with someone familiar with Newspaper Rock.)

http://www.jefflindsay.com/LDSFAQ/FQ_BMProb2.shtml

I'll repeat again what I told Ray: science is not perfect, but it is self-correcting which enhances credibility. If someone is making a claim that is the opposite or contradictory to what mainstream scholars in the field accept, then one MUST exercise some skepticism and test the claim.

The fact that there were no horses during the Book of Mormon time frame is not disputed among mainstream scholars in the field. Every claim of evidence that I've investigated has turned up empty, or outright fraudulent. The more careful scholars in this field, like Brant Gardner, do not claim there is evidence of the horse during the time period, while they may hope for FUTURE evidence. Instead, he focuses on the potential mistranslation issue.

[_Gazelam]

Thank you Beastie, I wondered why that particular piece had'New Testament gotten more press.

Much obliged.