{"id":41907,"date":"2021-06-30T11:38:22","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T16:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=41907"},"modified":"2021-06-29T21:43:05","modified_gmt":"2021-06-30T02:43:05","slug":"a-whole-lot-of-hugh-nibley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/a-whole-lot-of-hugh-nibley\/","title":{"rendered":"A Whole Lot of Hugh Nibley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some years ago, I attended a course on the Pearl of Great Price <\/em>at the Logan Institute that could have just as easily been entitled \u201cTeachings of Hugh Nibley.\u201d\u00a0 The teacher was well-versed in Nibley\u2019s writings and frequently used them in discussing both the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham.\u00a0 And, frankly, it made the class quite interesting to attend because of the insights the teacher shared from his reading of Hugh Nibley\u2019s works.\u00a0 In part because of the things that Nibley wrote, he has garnered attention as a widely-known figure of the 20th<\/sup> century in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.\u00a0 In a recent interview with Jeff Bradshaw of the Interpreter Foundation, Kurt Manwaring discussed the new volume Hugh Nibley Observed<\/a><\/em>, which \u201ccontains more than 800 pages about the life of Latter-day Saint Scholar Hugh Nibley, including contributions from Dallin H. Oaks, Richard Bushman, and Truman G. Madsen.\u201d\u00a0 In the discussion at Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site, they went over a variety of topics, including who Hugh Nibley was, the impact of his work on various Latter-day Saints, and some discussion of what the Interpreter Foundation is currently working on.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post, with a few excerpts and some discussion, but for the original post, follow the link here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hugh Nibley was an influential professor at BYU and a noted apologist for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.\u00a0 As stated in the interview, \u201cHugh W. Nibley (1910\u20132005) was arguably the most brilliant Latter-day Saint scholar of the 20th century, with wide-ranging interests in scripture, history, and social issues,\u201d and \u201chis erudition was recognized and admired by many of his non-Latter-day Saint colleagues.\u201d\u00a0 Nibley was well-versed in linguistics and ancient studies and used those skills to provide intellectual support for the archaeological, linguistic, and historical claims of Joseph Smith and the Church.\u00a0 One example discussed in the interview was as follows:<\/p>\n

His best-known discovery is that of a remarkable match between a name in the\u00a0Book of Moses<\/em>\u00a0and in a\u00a0Dead Sea Scrolls<\/em>\u00a0text discovered in 1948 called the\u00a0Book of Giants<\/em>\u00a0(BG). In the\u00a0Book of Moses<\/em>, the name appears as Mahijah or Mahujah (Moses 6:40; 7:2) and in English translations of\u00a0BG\u00a0<\/em>it is usually given as Mahaway or Mahawai. Nibley found not only that the ancient form of these names were likely to have matched well, but also that the roles of the corresponding characters were analogous.<\/p>\n

Professor Matthew Black, a\u00a0Dead Sea Scrolls<\/em>\u00a0expert and a collaborator on the first English translation of\u00a0BG<\/em>, published in 1976, was also impressed with the similarity of the\u00a0BG\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Book of Moses<\/em>\u00a0names. Like Nibley, he seems to have seen this finding as evidence that Joseph Smith\u2019s Enoch text was ancient\u2014even though he didn\u2019t believe that Joseph Smith translated it through a process that relied on divine revelation. Instead, upon meeting Latter-day Saint graduate student Gordon C. Thomasson (who was familiar with Nibley\u2019s Enoch research), Black initially suggested that a copy of a text drawing on the some of the same Enoch traditions as\u00a0BG\u00a0<\/em>must have made its way to Joseph Smith sometime before the translation of the\u00a0Book of Moses<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nibley said that during a previously unplanned visit Professor Black made to BYU soon afterward, Black reiterated his view that Joseph Smith must have relied on an ancient source in his translation. Thomasson relates this interesting story in more detail in his chapter of Hugh Nibley Observed. Other non-Latter-day Saint scholars have also remarked favorably on Nibley\u2019s discovery, and later research continues to support his hypothesis of a relationship between the names.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nibley\u2019s apologetic efforts has helped to keep people in the Church with the various pieces of evidence he brought together.\u00a0 For example, Richard Lyman Bushman recalled that during his college years, his \u201ctestimony was teetering in the balance,\u201d but when he came into contact with Nibley\u2019s books Lehi in the Desert <\/em>and the World of the Jaredites<\/em>, he was fascinated by \u201cthe idea of Arabic poetry in the naming of hills and valleys for Laman and Lemuel, and the peculiar oasis on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula that Nephi named Bountiful and that Nibley identified as a pocket of greenery unknown to anyone in the West in Joseph Smith\u2019s time.\u201d\u00a0 Ultimately, Bushman recalled, that: \u201cThese little specks of evidence provided the kind of rational support I was looking for in my quest for conviction.\u201d\u00a0 Because of similar impacts on other Latter-day Saints, efforts to compile Nibley\u2019s writings and works have led to The\u00a0Collected Works of Hugh Nibley<\/em>, which includes 19 hefty volumes.<\/p>\n

Hugh Nibley Observed<\/em>, however, is more focused on biographical information about Nibley.\u00a0 As summarized by Jeff Bradshaw: \u201cIn this volume, readers will discover that the personal stories and perspectives behind the scholarship are sometimes even more captivating and inspiring than his brilliant and witty intellectual breakthroughs.\u201d\u00a0 As shared in the interview, the backstory of this volume was as follows:<\/p>\n

Some years ago (I can\u2019t remember now how and when), I ran across a fascinating series of audio recordings of a BYU Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship-sponsored lecture series that was given in 2010, in commemoration of the anniversary of Hugh Nibley\u2019s 100th birthday. Later I discovered, there were a few of these that had been posted on YouTube and a few others that had been published.<\/p>\n

But the full set of audio recordings was nowhere to be found on the Web and few people I knew had ever heard of them. Over time, I kept having the nagging thought that these should be made more available.<\/p>\n

My friend Steve Whitlock and I started to conceive of a book that would contain these lectures as a nucleus. We decided to include other chapters from Nibley\u2019s friends and family. Shirley S. Ricks, a skilled and dedicated editor who was heavily involved in the original\u00a0Collected Works of Hugh Nibley<\/em>\u00a0series, agreed to join the project and made substantial and invaluable contributions. With the backing of\u00a0The Interpreter Foundation<\/em>, significant help and overall suggestions from Jack Welch (the prime mover behind\u00a0FARMS\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Collected Works of Hugh Nibley<\/em>, who also wrote the foreword and three other chapters), and the partnership of\u00a0Book of Mormon Central<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0FAIR\u00a0<\/em>the project began to accelerate. We were thrilled that members of the family agreed to contribute materials (the book includes over 200 photos\u2014many never before published), including moving talks given at Hugh Nibley\u2019s memorial service at the Provo Tabernacle in 2005. With permission, eloquent remarks at that service given by Jack Welch and\u00a0President Dallin H. Oaks\u00a0were also included.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For more information about and excerpts from this volume, follow the link to Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site here<\/a>.\u00a0 There is also some information about a variety of initiatives that the Interpreter Foundation<\/em> will be making available in the near future and some (such as the Complete Nibley Bibliography<\/em>) that will grow over time.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lengthy post, but if you\u2019re interested in Hugh Nibley, it\u2019s worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some years ago, I attended a course on the Pearl of Great Price at the Logan Institute that could have just as easily been entitled \u201cTeachings of Hugh Nibley.\u201d\u00a0 The teacher was well-versed in Nibley\u2019s writings and frequently used them in discussing both the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham.\u00a0 And, frankly, it made the class quite interesting to attend because of the insights the teacher shared from his reading of Hugh Nibley\u2019s works.\u00a0 In part because of the things that Nibley wrote, he has garnered attention as a widely-known figure of the 20th century in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.\u00a0 In a recent interview with Jeff Bradshaw of the Interpreter Foundation, Kurt Manwaring discussed the new volume Hugh Nibley Observed, which \u201ccontains more than 800 pages about the life of Latter-day Saint Scholar Hugh Nibley, including contributions from Dallin H. Oaks, Richard Bushman, and Truman G. Madsen.\u201d\u00a0 In the discussion at Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site, they went over a variety of topics, including who Hugh Nibley was, the impact of his work on various Latter-day Saints, and some discussion of what the Interpreter Foundation is currently working on.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2890],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-desk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41907"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41908,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41907\/revisions\/41908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}