The 2024 Sampson Avard Golden Scepter Award

[sock puppet]

The King of what? Seals and Croft have a song from 1974, "King of Nothing." Or, perhaps, at least the King of Chiasmus.

[Tom]

I can’t help but be reminded of the Proprietor’s preposterous boast in his desperate fundraising appeal earlier this year:

The Interpreter Foundation is the major source of new research that is, in turn, being popularized by Scripture Central and FAIR to reach a broad audience of nonmembers and members via videos, written materials, and social and other media. Without The Interpreter Foundation, this source of new and faithful research would disappear, and a vita light would be extinguished.

I can envision Brother Welch having a good laugh as he repeats these lines to the Proprietor when they run into each other at Maverik every week or two. (Brother Welch has a gift for memorization.)

Past winners of this award:
viewtopic.php?p=2836387#p2836387

[Everybody Wang Chung]

The Afore is really desperate to try to show that he and John Welch are friends for some reason. Nothing could be further from the truth. John Welch does not think highly of the Afore or his "scholarship." John is not shy about telling anyone the same.

There is a good reason his Scripture Central is in direct competition with the Interpreter and is kicking its butt in fund raising and popularity.

[Doctor Scratch]

I can’t help but be reminded of the Proprietor’s preposterous boast in his desperate fundraising appeal earlier this year:

The Interpreter Foundation is the major source of new research that is, in turn, being popularized by Scripture Central and FAIR to reach a broad audience of nonmembers and members via videos, written materials, and social and other media. Without The Interpreter Foundation, this source of new and faithful research would disappear, and a vita light would be extinguished.

I can envision Brother Welch having a good laugh as he repeats these lines to the Proprietor when they run into each other at Maverik every week or two. (Brother Welch has a gift for memorization.)

Exactly, Tom. If the organizations are essentially on an equal footing, and they’re all “good friends,” then why is the Afore acting as if Interpreter is the central fountain of knowledge while FAIR and Scripture Central are merely parasitic barnacles that are recycling Interpreter’s “greatness”?

Meanwhile, as I pointed out, Scripture Central has made efforts to patch things up with the Heartlanders, and just today Interpreter brought out the “big guns” to go after Jonathan Neville. I was surprised to see the normally generous and low-key Brant Gardner using a mocking title in his piece, though maybe that was imposed on him by the editorial team?

[Kishkumen]

If DCP has been the single most important public face and keyboard of Mopologetics, Welch has always been the single most important player behind the scenes. Welch is a deserving recipient indeed. What amazes me, though, is that no apologist has ever equaled the intellectual contribution of Nibley. It is really somewhat sad. Seriously, no LDS apologist, no LDS scholar has ever come close to Nibley. This is not to say that LDS scholarship is bereft of worthwhile contributions; rather, I submit that no one has equaled the vision of Nibley and it may be that no one ever will.

[Doctor Scratch]

If DCP has been the single most important public face and keyboard of Mopologetics, Welch has always been the single most important player behind the scenes. Welch is a deserving recipient indeed. What amazes me, though, is that no apologist has ever equaled the intellectual contribution of Nibley. It is really somewhat sad. Seriously, no LDS apologist, no LDS scholar has ever come close to Nibley. This is not to say that LDS scholarship is bereft of worthwhile contributions; rather, I submit that no one has equaled the vision of Nibley and it may be that no one ever will.

Yes: and your remark is the answer to Sock Puppet’s question: Welch has always exerted a huge influence from behind the scenes.

[drumdude]

If DCP has been the single most important public face and keyboard of Mopologetics, Welch has always been the single most important player behind the scenes. Welch is a deserving recipient indeed. What amazes me, though, is that no apologist has ever equaled the intellectual contribution of Nibley. It is really somewhat sad. Seriously, no LDS apologist, no LDS scholar has ever come close to Nibley. This is not to say that LDS scholarship is bereft of worthwhile contributions; rather, I submit that no one has equaled the vision of Nibley and it may be that no one ever will.

As someone who didn’t grow up knowing about Nibbley, wasn’t most of his scholarship found to be bunk nonsense?

[Kishkumen]

As someone who didn’t grow up knowing about Nibbley, wasn’t most of his scholarship found to be bunk nonsense?

Ideas don’t have to be factually correct in order to be influential. No one would deny the influence of Freud and Jung, but their work is not really applicable in modern psychology so much as in the broader culture.

[drumdude]

As someone who didn’t grow up knowing about Nibbley, wasn’t most of his scholarship found to be bunk nonsense?

Ideas don’t have to be factually correct in order to be influential. No one would deny the influence of Freud and Jung, but their work is not really applicable in modern psychology so much as in the broader culture.

That makes more sense. So he essentially cultivated the ground that mopologists are still farming, to varying degrees of success.

[I Have Questions]

Ideas don’t have to be factually correct in order to be influential. No one would deny the influence of Freud and Jung, but their work is not really applicable in modern psychology so much as in the broader culture.

That makes more sense. So he essentially cultivated the ground that mopologists are still farming, to varying degrees of success.

From what I understand, Nibley has been shown to be a shoddy scholar, one that starts with a predetermined conclusion and who then cherry picked evidences to support that which he wanted to conclude. Some have pointed to “dishonesty” in his approach.

In Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Salt Lake City Messenger, Ronald V. Huggins wrote in 2008 that Nibley "modifies his quotations to artificially render them more supportive", and provided several examples.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Nibley

Addressing Huggins's criticisms directly, Ricks argued that Nibley's translation style could be more poetic than literal, and that Nibley saw translation as a commentary in itself.

Yeah, the opposite of literal is poetic…

Egyptologist John Gee, a student of Nibley and contemporary Mormon apologist, wrote, "Nibley has a tendency to use myth for history and to flatten the chronology of sources from a variety of periods to create his historical portrait."[109] Ariel Bybee Laughton, a scholar of early Christianity, wrote that Nibley's writing on early Christianity "displays the seams and cracks of a methodology largely founded upon apologetic motivation."

Shulem’s scholarship on the facsimilies is more robust than Nibley’s.