In case anyone is interested, FAIR has uploaded some transcripts from last month’s conference:
Reflections on Secular Anti-Mormonism by Daniel C. Peterson
What I Learned about Life, the Church, and the Cosmos from Hugh Nibley by Boyd Petersen
Though uploaded earlier, this one was not linked on the main page of the site, so you may have missed it – “Believest thou…?”: Faith, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Psychology of Religious Experience by Wendy Ulrich, Ph.D.
The last one was one of my favorites, though the other two are also excellent.
I dont usually bother with polemical stuff, but, being compelled by boredom, I started reading Daniel C. Peterson’s reflections on secular anti-mormonism, and made it about half way through until I got bogged down by the pretentious quotes (e.g., Bryant, Yates, Voltaire, Graucho(!), etc.) and gratuitous blatherings about his extensive world travels. I dont know this guy at all, he appears to be a professor at BYU, but is this his typical writing style? The article is awful, I have to assume its the text of a speech from their conference. Is it representative of what FAIR publishes/promotes? I learned absolutely nothing about secular anti-mormonism. How can anyone take them seriously when they promote this kind of stuff? Does anyone know this guy well enough to say whether this a representative of his writings?
In his comments I have to assume he is obliquely referencing ex-mormon.org, does anyone have any inkling who the person is whom he is referring to when he says “one frequent poster in particular, who claims simply to be doubting and troubled, but who in fact never misses an opportunity for a snide remark about his Church, in which he remains active”? Is he making reference to the bloggernacle, or just web sites in general?
You surprise me Kurt. You don’t know Daniel Peterson at all? He’s the lightning rod for FARMS and the RFM crowd, but he’s quite respectable, academically speaking. He is, techincally, an Arabic professor, but he’s had his thumb in just about everything- Greek, Philosophy, New Testament, etc. For example, he was asked to write the bio on Mohammed for The Rivers of Paradise edited by David Noel Freedman and foreward by Hans Kung. Amazon link.
Some of his better LDS papers (actual papers, not spontaneous talks) are “Nephi and his Asherah” (talking about Asherah and Tree of Life traditions in relation to Nephi’s vision) and “‘Ye Are Gods’: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind.”
“is this his typical writing style”
No, nor is it even writing. His talk usually doesn’t have a title until a few days before, and it’s often quite spontaneous. I doubt he had much written out ahead of time.
I assume he’s either talking about the FAIR boards or RFM.
I surprise you? How so? I dont bother with polemical stuff. Nope, not familiar with Peterson at all. I dont read LDS-sourced material when it comes to Scripture commentary. When it comes to LDS historical stuff I prefer first-person accounts and studiously avoid historical commentary, as its largely biased one way or the other. I didnt go to BYU or any affiliated Church schools.
Kurt, I am only vaguely familiar with Dan Peterson, but that seems to be his style of for his not-as-prepared, not-for-official-publication stuff. Personally, I find it amusing.
Tanya,
I guess my expectations were off. I anticipated something academic and publication worthy, as opposed to the private musings of a polemicist on why secular anti-mormons are objects of derision (Now with even more clever quotes!). I suppose it would be amusing if Peterson actually did a Graucho imitation for the quotes. But, alas, that doesnt come across in the text.
“I anticipated something academic and publication worthy”
Read the others, then. Don’t judge the whole network on one spontaneous presentation which was not intended to be a dry academic analysis.
I guess I was surprised because Peterson has been all over in LDS publications. I believe he’s been in just about everything LDS-related at one point or another, not just “polemics”- FARMS, FAIR, BYU Studies, Sunstone, Dialogue, JMH, the Ensign, Church News, etc. My guess is that the overlap in the venn diagram between those who are familiar with these sources and those who haven’t heard of Daniel Peterson is very small.
I also don’t understand why (and I’m not sure you do) some dismiss LDS scholarship (such as those journals listed above) simply because they’re LDS.
Ben,
Mmmm, yeah, well, maybe my continuing boredom will propel me to read some of the others /*he said grudgingly*/.
I dont regularly read any of those periodicals you have listed there, except the FP message in the Ensign which for quite some time I got off the lds.org site until the m-i-l signed us up for the Friend and the Ensign.
While I cannot speak for others, I do understand why I dont read it, because its usually too parochial. LDS-sourced material tends to be too LDS-centric for me, and as such, I find it unpalatable. Granted, nobody is capable of being entirely objective and it would be unreasonable for me to expext that, but the LDS-sourced stuff is typically just uninformative to me. There are some notable exceptions, but by and large thats my take on things. An example, and forgive me for sounding like a pretentious butthole here, I’ve read just about every scholarly Isaiah commentary in print and the LDS-sourced ones are, by comparison, which isnt saying much at all, pretty awful. Picking through my favored Scripture commentaries in the Bible, not one of them would be LDS, because LDS Biblical scholarship is weak, and that impacts our understanding of our own modern revelations. Anyway, off the soapbox for now.
Thank you Tanya for these links. While Daniel C Peterson’s presentation could be seen as a bit too casual in the beginning, I liked it and thought the good stuff was at the end : ) Anything about Nibley is worth reading, and I really loved Believest Thou?
I’m not the sharpest tack in the box and I don’t know nearly enough to know what makes a quote pretentious, but this one (from Daniel C Peterson) helped me with a question I had about the term “a compound in one” while reading 2 Nephi 2:
“If there is no God,” says Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, “that means everything is permitted.” Why? Because nothing matters at all; everything is meaningless. However, this liberation comes at a very, very high price. “If we believe in nothing,” said the great French writer and Nobel laureate Albert Camus, if nothing has any meaning and if we can affirm no values whatsoever, then everything is possible and nothing has any importance. There is no pro or con: the murderer is neither right nor wrong. We are free to stoke the crematory fires or to devote ourselves to the care of lepers. Evil and virtue are mere chance or caprice.
At the point where it is no longer possible to say what is black and what is white, the light is extinguished and freedom becomes a voluntary prison.”
Kurt: Dan Peterson has given the closing address at every FAIR Conference. His is usually the least formal and most lighthearted of the presentations, and is designed to wind down the conference with a little humor and keen observations of the latest in the anti-Mormon movement. His last few presentations have been given with few or no notes.
To know Dan Peterson in person is to know that he is a man of immense wit and good fun. I have met him numerous times, and had dinner with him twice, and he is always a hail fellow well met.
I read the transcript of Peterson’s talk. I even enjoy pretentious quotes, but my reaction was similar to Kurt’s. The paper rambles all over the place and is weighed down by irrelevant distractions. For example: Is Europe really culturally infertile? Who knows. More importantly, who the h*ck cares, since the paper is supposed to be about secular anti-Mormonism. His gratuitous line about post-War Germany having no standing to lecture anyone on anything is unmotivated by the preceding quote; it’s a thoughtless and reflexive response to an imaginary opponent and, coming from Peterson as a self-proclaimed Germanophile, does not inspire confidence in the rest of the paper. And, whether you agree with him on the point or not–why is he raising the issue in this paper? Was the governor of Pennsylvania barred from speaking at the ’92 Democratic convention because he was pro-life, or, as some Democrats will insist, was he not invited because he didn’t endorse Clinton? More importantly, what does it have to do with the issue at hand? Perhaps Peterson thinks of the entire Democratic party as secular anti-Mormons; if he did, he’d undoubtedly even get a few sustaining votes. But for others, the point is irrelevant and only weakens the paper.
As far as I could tell, Peterson doesn’t distinguish clearly between secular anti-Mormonism, secular antipathy to Christianity in general, and secular misunderstanding of all forms of religious experience in general and Mormonism in particular. I don’t think those three should be conflated. There’s a huge difference between studied anti-Mormon agitation and uninformed statements rooted in ignorance.
Ben, you mention that it’s just D. Peterson’s speaking style, but I’m not sympathetic. Presenting papers at a conference requires a lot of advance preparation. If I tried to make up with spontaneity what I lacked in preparation, I would end up saying a lot of stupid things. Maybe Peterson can pull it off, but the transcript isn’t strong evidence for it.
“Is Europe really culturally infertile? Who knows. More importantly, who the h*ck cares, since the paper is supposed to be about secular anti-Mormonism.”
I believe his point was that secular anti-Mormons share many of same inconsistencies and hypocrisies with secular Europeans.
Thanks for the links, Tanya.
My two bits: read the transcripts, not just the comments here. Reading Dan Peterson gives me food for thought, while most criticisms of him–here and elsewhere–write him off because his style is seen as too pretentious, adversarial, acerbic, etc. There may be something to this–Peterson’s style certainly has its idiosyncrasies–but I’m often disappointed that there isn’t more discussion of the issues he raises. (Whatever one thinks of the style, Peterson’s remarks are not merely vacuous.) Personally, I found the presentation more coherent than J. Green, but he does makes some attempt to engage the content. That seems to be a step in the right direction.
Just a quick correction: my last comment (#12) should read, “I found the presentation more coherent than J. Green did, . . .” No slight intended, J.
I found the following from Peterson’s talk quite relevant to current discussions on the bloggernacle and actually quite insightful:
I can’t get enough of Dan Peterson’s articles. Loved him as an Arabic Prof — always learned more than just about Arabic. I really enjoy most of his writing; he’s a great and prolific defender of the faith. If I remember correctly, President Hinckley or at least one of the quorum of the 12 quoted him in a conference talk a couple years ago. I look forward to reading the piece you have linked.
Kurt is so right, DP’s article was a yawning, boring, sleeper!!
The guy almost writes this stuff as if he is surprised and miffed by the fact that there are people out here that actually do not believe in God and will do everything in their power to invoke these beliefs in the same way that we “faithfully know” that “the gospel is true”. He almost made it seem like this was some new phenomenon that had to be reported on because ‘He thought it was interesting!’. So flowery and over-the-top, it made me almost want to write him personally and tell him to, ‘Stop the insanity, check into reality, and understand that people actually think that way more than you realize!’ ‘Hello, this is life outside of the ‘Zion Curtain’…the guy needs to get out of the ivory tower, called Utah, and come to the trenches where the real battles are being waged daily against this ‘Sectoral Anti-mormonism’, or in other words, ‘Natural men, who are enemies to God that have no desire to repent and accpet God because he is a myth and cannot be seen, therefore why should they believe!’. NAUSEATING!!
A friend called my attention to this thread, and I had resolved not to post in it until I read the last comment. That was simply too rich to pass up.
I would like to reassure Adrian Hall that I have, in fact, been out of Utah County, and, even, outside of the entire state of Utah. Several times. Most recently, until Wednesday night, I was lecturing at universities in Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, and Hong Kong. I was born and raised in California, where I also earned my doctorate following four and a half years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo. I served a mission to Switzerland. That sort of stuff.
I know, I know. More boastful travel narrative. But I’m not sure how else to make the point. I just don’t want Mr. Hall to worry too much: I’m aware of the external world. Really, I am. I’ve even read several books by non-Mormons.
Nauseatingly yours,
dcp
Daniel, it’s always interesting to me how people of your intellectual weight seem to draw lightweight critics. I enjoy everything of yours that I’ve read. If you go to our comments policy, you will find that this board maintains a policy of being respectful and supportive of the Church, unlike many others. But even here we suffer from a surfeit of snarkers.
Daniel Peterson, I’m glad you checked in, and I’m glad you read what I wrote. I trust your closing address was a big hit at the FAIR conference, but I don’t think it translates well into an online text for an unknown and unknowable audience. Even if I had been in the audience, I suspect I would have still been dissatisfied for the reasons I mentioned: too many distracting irrelevancies, and failure to distinguish between secularizing apostasy on the one hand and uninformed secularism on the other.
I assume you’re accustomed to your work drawing a response, both loopy stuff better ignored without comment, and substantial criticism. You can categorize my comments however you’d like.
Thanks. I have.
Let me expand on the somewhat cheeky response above by saying, simply, that (a) I disagree with your criticisms, largely because I think them misdirected, and that (b) I believe you may be confusing a rather popular presentation to a non-scholarly audience with a paper in academic philosophy or the sociology of ideas. (I was serious in my description of the presentation as “sketches and preliminary reflections.”)
That said, of the critical comments here, yours were, by several light years, the most reasonable, substantive, and coherent. They could be discussed. The assertions by Kurt and the other fellow (that I’m boring, disconnected from reality, elitist, self-absorbed, nauseating, pretentious, naïve, ill-educated, clueless, and unaware) are probably true, but don’t seem to lend themselves to real discussion — not, at least, to any discussion that would interest me — unless I were meeting with a therapist.
DP, after I tossed you that slow pitch right down the middle, I would have been terribly disappointed if you hadn’t swung at it. Still, I appreciate your confidence that–to quote Richard Nixon–I am not a kook. Registering disagreement is probably the best outcome for now, but maybe we can have a good clean elbows-and-brass-knuckles argument about something important sometime. You’re probably right that I read the transcription without understanding the whole context of your remarks. I dunno, maybe you could complain to the head of FAIR for putting them online, or somethink like that.
Wow, look at that, Daniel Peterson (or a reasonable facsimile-I’ll assume its him as the M* people would check his IP for a range from BYU) has come to defend himself on the bloggernacle! Not surprising, giving his polemical background and connections to the ether.
Daniel, I’ll presume to use your first name since you used mine, if you care to respond to my original questions, I would appreciate it. What online forums were you referring to in your article and who was the one person in particular you made mention of? Or is that one of those topics of discussion that doesnt interest you, at least no longer at this point?
I’ll grant that perhaps in person your presentation could have been more appealing, particularly to those who would know you personally and be acquainted with your sense of humor. However, to the casual occasional observer (e.g., me), it didnt convey much of anything. I went into the article expecting to learn something about secular anti-mormons, read about half of it, and learned nothing about the subject. OK, OK, I apparently got an unrepresentative sample, so please point me to one article you see as representative of your work, and I will read it and change my opinion if necessary.
Now, I realize youre an important busy guy, but if you have the time to check into M* to defend yourself from all of us cretins, you have the time to respond to a couple of fair and relevant questions and cut and paste a link.
I declined to mention specific fora for a specific reason. In the major case, I had no particular wish and no particular motive to publicize a noxious message board with which, in any event, many in the audience were already familiar. In the instance of the specific poster to whom I alluded, I chose to identify neither him nor the list upon which I encountered him because I have no intention of embarrassing him, drawing attention to him, picking a fight with him, or even talking about him individually, except in the sense that, to me, he illustrates a particularly clear illustration of a larger and rather sad phenomenon.
You’re right that there are things in which I have no interest: I have no interest, for example, in defending my sense of humor, my personality, or my writing style. Those are matters of taste. At least two or three people, even beyond my family, seem to like me. It’s to be expected, though, that others won’t. And, so long as their dislike of me doesn’t rest on unethical acts or indisputably poor behavior on my part, I’m prepared to live with that.
I regret that you learned nothing from and appreciated nothing in my presentation. Others (including some for whose judgment and writing ability I have great respect) have claimed different experiences with it. There is, as the saying goes, no disputing about taste.
I’m not inclined to view myself as the defendant and you as the (clearly rather hostile) judge, jury, and executioner in a trial of my literary output. And, anyway, I’m aware of no reason why I should regard you as representive of the “casual reader.” Still, for what it’s worth, I suppose I’ll mention a few of my personal favorite Mormon-related pieces. After all, as an author, I like people to read what I’ve written, and this is an opportunity to advertise a few of them:
Many years ago, I wrote a little LDS-oriented book about the Near East, Islam, and the Arabs, entitled Abraham Divided. Some readers claim to have been able to tolerate it, though I believe it’s now out of print.
There is also a book called Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints. It is also probably out of print.
I edit, and frequently write for, a twice-yearly journal called the FARMS Review.
But I’m probably most fond, relatively recently, of a quartet of articles:
“On the Motif of the Weeping God in Moses 7.†In Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and Stephen D. Ricks, eds., Revelation, Reason, and Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen (Provo: FARMS, 2002), 285-317.
“What the Manuscripts and the Eyewitnesses Tell Us about the Translation of the Book of Mormon.†In Uncovering the Original Text of the Book of Mormon: History and Findings of the Critical Text Project, edited by M. Gerald Bradford and Alison V. P. Coutts (Provo: FARMS, 2002), 67-71.
“‘Ye are Gods’: Psalm 82 and John 10 as Witnesses to the Divine Nature of Humankind.†In Stephen D. Ricks, Donald W. Parry, and Andrew H. Hedges, eds., The Disciple as Scholar: Essays on Scripture and the Ancient World in Honor of Richard Lloyd Anderson (Provo: FARMS, 2000), 471-594.
“Nephi and His Asherah: A Note on 1 Nephi 11:8-23.†In Mormons, Scripture, and the Ancient World: Studies in Honor of John L. Sorenson, edited by Davis Bitton (Provo: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1998), 191-243.
Feel free to read any of these, or none of them.
Incidentally, Kurt, I used your first name because you used it, and didn’t use your last name because you didn’t.
Daniel,
How marvelously polemical of you. I freely admitted that I could have been wrong about my impression of you from what might have been a bad sample, but the ensuing discourse is serving to cement my initial impression.
Youre definitely right about tastes.
Nobody was attacking your sense of humor, or your personality. What was being addressed was the article, which was the documentation of prepared public comments made by your person. No personal attacks were made, regardless of your insinuations. And nobody was taking a poll as to the relative popularity of your comments, so appealing to people whom you respect whom like your work serves no purpose other than to show you like circular logic when it comes to character witnesses (I would have to assume you wouldnt respect them if they didnt like your writings, call me a cynic).
I asked for a link to something of yours you consider representative of your work. While I assure you I am very impressed with all of the works you have written which are no longer available, since they are out of print, that does me no good, so why refer me to them? I’d like a link to something online, please, as requested. Thanks.
P.S. Not everyone is out to get you, so if someone hasnt got the appropriate context for something youve said, perhaps providing that context will lead to better understanding, as opposed to trumping up charges and credential waving.
Kurt,
The Journal of Book Mormon studies version of Nephi and His Asherah is available online.
You seem to want to make this personal, Kurt, and to be eager for conflict. That’s yet another thing in which I’m not interested.
Have a nice day.
Karl,
I read the linked article, and while I dont agree with the general premise or conclusions of it, it is at least a well-written and well-reasoned piece that I would expect. It also entirely fails to explain why the Lord’s messenger would use such a symbol, which at the very least is tainted by idolatrous perversion, in a true heavenly vision.
Daniel,
I have no interest in your person at all, never did. I stayed on topic, pal. If you werent interested in conflict, you wouldnt be a FARMS gun-for-hire bashing anti-mormons. You have a nice life.
Self-interest dictates that I make another appearance here:
If, Kurt, you could take a break from the unprovoked belligerence for just a moment, could you please tell me where I can pick up my pay as a “FARMS gun-for-hire bashing anti-mormons”? I didn’t even realize that there was a check waiting for me. It seems that my ship just came in. Wahoo!
Dang. One more thing. Curiosity overcomes me:
Since you’ve never heard of me, Kurt, since you’re totally unfamiliar with my writing and pay no attention either to Mormon-related polemics or to Mormon-specific scholarship, how were you able to divine that I’m a “FARMS gun-for-hire bashing anti-mormons” who loves conflict?
DP,
I warn you that attempting to reason with Kurt is a dangerous proposition. He is notorious for his inflammatory language and over-usage of terms such as “ad hominem” “circular” and other such labels. He’s not an idiot by any means but his style in debate rarely lends itself to much resolution if any in the end.
Daniel,
Darn, and here I was thinking it was over. What happened to “Have a nice day”?
RE #29: “unprovoked beligerance”? Do you have a keyboard macro for stuff like this? Because there is clearly plenty of provocation in your comments. So, being the closing speaker for every FARMS conference (see comment 9 above, I am assuming its correct) isnt sufficient to get you in as a FARMS man. Since when is a paycheck required to be affiliated? Oh, OK, you want to force me into an over-literalism of an obvious figure of speech so you show me to be in error. OK, whatever, polemicist. Youre a FARMS point man there to slam anti-mormons, paycheck or no.
RE #30: By reading the comments in this thread which clearly tie you closely with FARMS, which is nothing but an apologist organization. What are you trying to prove here, that I am in fact either an anti-mormon polemicist myself (i.e., a wolf in sheep’s clothing, trying to undermine FARMS by discrediting you) or just an ignorant boob? Come on, give it a rest.
Now, Daniel, since you have completely changed the subject away from your speech to defending your person while attacking my person, would you care to explain your comment in #27 regarding your alleged aversion to conflict? Nah, forget it, dont bother, I dont care. I am (was) only interested in discussing your writings, which you obviously arent. So, lets not drag this out any more. If you want to explain the context of your speech, so that people like me can better understand it, great, go ahead. Or, if you want to talk about your Tree of Life=Asherah thing, fine, we can do that too. But, lets try to keep it impersonal, shall we?
And now for Jeffrey’s next feat of petty revenge, he shall reverse his vote for “Bloggernacle’s Most Annoying” after being shown to be completely ignorant on the subject being discussed.
Good grief.
And goodbye.
(By the way, it was a FAIR conference, not a FARMS conference.)
Kurt,
Are you that same lost soul who transformed Prudence’s faith-promoting poetry into something dirty over at the Unmentionable Site? Are you the same sad purveyor of filth who has falsely accused Prudence — the Apple of her Heavenly Father’s Eye — of assorted sins and fake identities? If so, shame on you for continuing your mindless rant of debauchery and scorn over here. I’m sure that a special place awaits you in Hades.
With all the hostility going on at this corner of the Bloggernacle, it’s a wonder everyone here doesn’t get struck by lightning, or at least spend more time visiting other, more righteous, divinely-inspired blogs.
I hear that http://www.bycommonconsent.com is pretty good (with the notable exception of that apostate Aaron Brown fellow).
No one knows curt like Kurt.
Prudence! Just because you are menopausal, thats no reason to go and get into fights all the time! I thought you said that Hormone Replacement Therapy was going to start working soon. We need to go and talk to that Doctor again. I am tired of having to reign you in publicly, this is just nonsense. You need to stop sticking your nose into other people’s business! Why do you think the Bishop pulled you aside last week at church and told you to stop gossiping about the nannies in our ward? Because its none of your business. Now, get off my computer and get back to work on those Katrina Hygiene Kits!
Kurt: I asked for a link to something of yours you consider representative of your work. While I assure you I am very impressed with all of the works you have written which are no longer available, since they are out of print, that does me no good, so why refer me to them? I’d like a link to something online, please, as requested.
The books Dan Peterson mentioned are readily available:
Despite the amazing growth of the Internet, there are many things worth reading that are not available online.
Kurt, give it a rest. A lot of this comes down to taste, style, and context, and doesn’t have much mileage in it. Plus, you underestimate the gift of bibliography. Interlibrary loan will provide access to books that are out of print. It doesn’t operate at Internet speed, but most important things don’t. A relevant topic will come up again before long, and then you’ll be ready to rumble. Or maybe the reading will change your mind.
Kurt, I suggest that you chill out a little bit. Your mad rhetorical flailings are making your look a little bit like someone in need of medication and therapy.
Wow, I step away for a while, and look what happens. Give it a rest, guys. Kurt, if you have something productive to add, fine, otherwise, stop hitting the “post comment” button.
Kurt, I suggest that you chill out a little bit. Your mad rhetorical flailings are making your look a little bit like someone in need of medication and therapy.
That, and a good horsewhipping, a few days on the Rack, and an exorcism.
M* EDITOR: Please refrain from making or suggesting physical threats, even when not serious. Let’s not add fuel to the fire, ok?
Prudence retracts her advocation of violence against the sinful, if only to show that she believes so strongly in Obedience as the First Law of Heaven, that she will blindly obey anyone who asks, even anonymous blog editors.
(Prudence still advocates a peaceful, non-violent exorcism of Kurt).
I haven’t had this much fun reading a blog discussion since M* bashed the BCC/dialouge merger.
(I’m rooting for DP).
😉
Before reading his piece on secular anti-mormonism, I’d never read anything by Daniel Peterson except his comments on Times and Seasons. And I found these to be terribly over-bearing and smug (but hey, it takes one to know one, right?) I read the FARMS review regularly (I belong to FARMS), though I find most of it to be quite shabbily done, It is occasionally enlightening. But it routinely views historical controversy as though it were altogether settled, and the pretense that they find it tiring to re-explain “settled” matters wears thin. Also, some of the pieces are simply hatchet jobs (reminiscent of Nibley’s “No Ma’am, That’s Not History”) that prompt one to wonder whether the author is stupid or just intellectually dishonest (I still haven’t decided which one Nibley was). Also, even the good essays are way too long (tip to Daniel Peterson: edit the essays more aggressively!). At any rate, based on the predominant tone of the FARMS review and what I’d read of his comments, my opinion of Daniel Peterson was not high.
That said, I read the Daniel Peterson piece, and I found it to be quite engaging and interesting as a popular essay. Nice work, Daniel Peterson.
DKL,
You’re not gonna start waving that wand of yours again, are you?
I’m probably just intellectually dishonest, but, candidly, I’m hoping against hope that I’m stupid in the same sense that Hugh Nibley was.
By the way, since I’ve taken to advertising things I’ve written, here’s the latest Mormon-oriented item to appear, written with John Gee and William Hamblin:
“‘And I Saw the Stars’: The Book of Abraham and Ancient Geocentric Astronomy.†In John Gee and Brian M. Hauglid, eds., Astronomy, Papyrus, and Covenant (Provo: FARMS, 2005), 1-16.
I rather like it.
I’m eagerly awaiting the time when I’ve finished enough of my last batch of books to read that one by John. I know back when John was living with me and was still planning what to do his thesis on that he was talking about a massive astronomical survey of Egyptian science and myth. That or an analysis of the Egyptian equivalent of the stock market and commodity markets. Both sounded amazingly intriguing. I don’t recall what he ended up doing it on.
BTW, Dan, any word on when Nibley’s book that John’s been working on will be out?
There are two Nibley volumes in the works right now:
The FARMS editorial staff is working on the index to the forthcoming second edition of The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri: An Egyptian Endowment this very week, and the book should appear within a few months (I hope).
The other, the manuscript on the hypocephalus (Facsimile 2) that Nibley was working on until his health failed him (and which is entitled One Eternal Round) is going to take quite some time to produce, as the manuscript situation is, to put it mildly, confused.
Everybody,
You know what, given Daniel’s thoughtful and intelligent explanation of the context of the original article in question, explaning that it was in fact intended to be a light-hearted ending to a rather serious conference, I have decided to change my position on the article. Especially persuasive was the robust defense given by the various commenters who did a good deal to shed greater light on Daniel’s intent and motivations, thereby making it clear it was not a polemical piece at all, as I had initially suspected. Furthermore, I would like to apologize to Daniel for pointing out that he is a polemicist, when in fact the evidence displayed here clearly contradicts that fact. And, finally, I would like to apologize to Tanya Spackman for commenting on an article posted in an M* thread. Next time I have an opinion that runs counter to the views of an M* contributor, and must therefore clearly be wrong-headed, I’ll not publicly post them, so that peace, love, and harmony (the kind which Daniel is obviously interested in propegating via his public speeches, which are promoted on M*) can prevail on M* uninterrupted.
Such being the case, that I was so egregiously incorrect in my initial assesment of Daniel’s article, I want to wholeheartedly encourage Daniel to submit it to the Ensign for publication. No doubt, its “engaging and interesting” qualities will be warmly embraced and it will be sped into broader publication, where its virtues can be truly appreciated.
And, I would also like to invite my friend Aaron to come give me that recommended horsewhipping and exorcism himself. I’ll be more than happy to pick you up from and drop you off at IAD.
Daniel Peterson, Why stop at being stupid the way Nibley was stupid? Why not be stupid the way that Rainman was stupid? (I hear he could memorize entire phone books. What a defender of the faith he would have made!)
I would love to be able to memorize the way the Rainman memorized. But I suspect that, to be a competent defender of the faith, one must also be able to speak, reason, and write — skills that, even at my advanced age, I still hope to develop. No, I much prefer Hugh Nibley’s type of alleged “stupidity.”
(In the event that I’m being too subtle, permit me to come right out and say that I regard any suggestion that Professor Nibley might have been “stupid” — or even merely a prodigious memorizer lacking the ability to analyze and synthesize — as laughably false and transparently absurd.)
Daniel Peterson: In the event that I’m being too subtle, permit me to come right out and say that I regard any suggestion that Professor Nibley might have been “stupid” — or even merely a prodigious memorizer lacking the ability to analyze and synthesize — as laughably false and transparently absurd.
Fear not, Daniel Peterson! Undue subtlety is nothing that people like you or me need to worry about.
But as long as we’re being as frank as possible, I’ll express my considered opinion (which is very nearly the opposite of yours): Permit me to come right out and say that I regard any suggestion that Professor Nibley might have been brilliant — or that he did anything remotely resembling first rate scholarship (like that done by [for example] Juanite Brooks) — as laughably false and transparently absurd.
I’m free, I believe, to think you either mad or simply wrong-headed.
Of course, whether one is brilliant or stupid is quite distinct from the question of whether one has done or will do “first rate scholarship.”
Whether Nibley did such scholarship is debatable (in the neutral sense that it can be debated); I do not think that the question of whether he was brilliant or “stupid” is open at all. That he was brilliant is beyond serious question.
Incidentally, I can be extremely subtle. But it typically won’t be noticed. That’s rather the point of subtlety, isn’t it?
Daniel Peterson: Incidentally, I can be extremely subtle.
Yes, and I can be exceptionally humble.
Daniel Peterson: Of course, whether one is brilliant or stupid is quite distinct from the question of whether one has done or will do “first rate scholarship.”
I agree, but one must either be stupid or intellectually dishonest to write and publish things like “No Ma’am That’s Not History.”
I’m sorry, but the accuracy of your assertion about “No Ma’am That’s Not History” would need to be demonstrated to me. It doesn’t, for me at least, have the character of an a priori truth, the mere mention of which suffices to convince.
I read the copy in the BYU library after I’d read Donna Hill’s bio and before I’d read Brodie’s. Things that stick out in my mind from 15 years ago are his arguments that Joseph Smith wasn’t a money digger and that his tone (in keeping with his title) is snide and sophomoric. In the subsequent biographies that I read (including Bushman’s), it became obvious to me that history had repeatedly vindicated Ms. Brodie’s work at the expense of Professor Nibley’s.
If you know where I might obtain a copy of the pamphlet (electronic or otherwise), I’ll be happy to re-read it and offer a more detailed analysis of its faults.
On the off chance that you are not entirely indifferent: If you’d like to take a shot at my scholarship (after all, turnabout’s fair play), I’m preparing a paper entitled “Joseph’s Two Churches in Nauvoo.” In the paper I argue that after his attempts to publicly teach polygamy were rebuffed, Joseph seized upon the Masonic ritual as a way to swear people to secrecy and create a second, underground church with different teachings (viz., polygamy and the Nauvoo doctrines of deity), additional ordinances, and a different executive structure.
I believe an online version is avalaible: “No Ma’am That’s Not History”
I’d never read anything by Hugh Nibley until I started blogging, about a year ago now.
I was underwhelmed.
Thanks for the link, Karl. I’ll be reading the pamphlet and responding with due speed and diligence. (I’ve skimmed it already, and it’s worse than I remembered.) Since it’s my position that Ms. Brodie’s biography is among the largest contributions to the understanding and development of real Mormon history (faithful or otherwise), perhaps I’ll submit my analysis as a guest post on this very blog (right here in River City!).
A summary and brief argument about DKL’s thesis (under the name Arturo Toscanini) was on this thread.
But please, let’s not turn this into a Nibley bash…
Yes, that’s the thesis of the paper I’m working on. (Not to be confused with my thesis about Brodie’s contribution or my thesis about Nibley being a light weight scholar.)
I’d forgotten about that thread. Interesting. Not to get too tangental, but DKL, your thesis that Joseph used Masonry to get the secrecy seems odd somehow. Weren’t there already pretty explicit and clear doctrinal basis for secrecy in places like the Book of Mormon? It seems Alma 13 while not as explicit as some claim, offers a lot of parallels to Navuoo. More significantly the issue of secrecy is fairly ubiquitous in the Bible (and could be found in commentaries of the time I suspect). The whole “he who has eyes to see” bit is certainly talked about in modern commentaries a lot. But Alma 12 offers everything you suggest Joseph needed Masonry for. There’s also the issue that (rightly or wrongly) Joseph thought Masonry had the apostate endowment.
The main point of No, Ma’am is that Brodie was continually reading Joseph Smith’s mind, telling us what he was thinking and feeling — which thoughts and feelings happened to fit neatly into Brodie’s thesis that Joseph was a fraud at best, mentally disturbed at worst. Nibley handily dispatched Brodie’s psychobiographical approach, and the majority of historians since then have had the same criticism of her.
The psychobiography craze would be dead if it weren’t for Dan Vogel and a handful of others who still insist on coming up with Freudian explanations of Joseph Smith.
DKL’s claim that Nibley was stupid or intellectually dishonest is laughable. It is possible to disagree with Nibley’s conclusions; it is simply impossible to claim he was some sort of idiot.
DKL: Things that stick out in my mind from 15 years ago are [Nibley’s] arguments that Joseph Smith wasn’t a money digger…
I just reviewed No, Ma’am again, and I find no portion of it that refers to this. Would you please point it out to me?
annegb: “I’d never read anything by Hugh Nibley until I started blogging, about a year ago now. I was underwhelmed.”
I’ve been reading Nibley since I was in high school, and working in related fields (e.g., classics and Semitics) for the past thirty years or so. I first met him when I was a freshman, and I knew him reasonably well for the last twenty years of his life. I was dazzled, hugely impressed, and immensely influenced.
Go figure.
I’m a big Nibley fan, but I have to agree that the various writings in the current Tinkling Cymbals leaves a lot to be desired. Rather than engaging the charges and discussing which have a basis in fact, he simply uses rhetoric to make hay on the inconsistencies of the critics without actually engaging with them. It is, unfortunately, an example of Sophistic writing that he railed against. Clearly not his best work, although I have to admit that it is very well written satire.
Someone once told me about a paper comparing his Broadie work with ancient Roman rhetoric. I’ve been dying to read that paper if anyone can find it.
BTW – I too am quite uncomfortable with psycho-history. And there’s been a lot on Joseph the past few years. Although I’ll confess to not having read Vogel’s JS bio. But from discussions on the FAIR forum, it really does appear Vogel engages in the intentionalist fallacy. I know DKL disagrees somewhat, and he and I discussed this as well. (He was, at the time, writing as Arturo)
To anyone who thinks Hugh Nibley is some sort of idiot, I recommend viewing the DVD The Faith of an Observer: Conversations with Hugh Nibley, or reading his biography.
George MacRae, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School, once lamented while hearing Nibley lecture, “It is obscene for a man to know that much!”
I don’t think anyone considers him an idiot Mike. (Don’t take DKL too seriously – he just likes to get a reaction from people. I sometimes wonder how much of what he writes he believes himself.) However clearly not all his arguments engage with the topics and texts he is discussing in anything but a superficial manner. Having said that though, I don’t think all of his papers were intended to be taking rigorously. Some might better be characterized as what we’d call “light” more political essays. There’s a lot of different styles in his corpus. It’s also important to recognize that not all of what has been published was intended for publication.
Unfortunately a lot of people reading the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley forget that it is just that, a collected works. That has to be borne in mind when reading it. You have the good, the bad and the ugly of Nibley’s works. I’m glad we have it all. But I think its unfair to judge it all the same. (The same might be said for any other scholarly “complete works” of other thinkers)
It’s fascinating to see people who don’t even come close to their accomplishments trying to bash Nibley and Daniel Peterson.
Clark, I don’t believe that Joseph got the idea of secrecy from Masonry; that would be absurd. As you point out, secrecy per seis no new thing, whether in Alma or in Masonry. And Joseph himself had been secretly practicing polygamy long before he became a Mason.
What was significant about Masonry was that he was able to use it to give cover to his underground church. Since Masonry was an established and well-known institution that provided its own meeting place, it allowed Joseph a venue to teach a secret set of doctrines under the auspices of practicing ordinary masonry. (And Joseph did perform endowments in the Nauvoo Lodge as soon as it was completed.)
Also, what leads you to believe that Joseph believed that Masonry was an apostate endowment? Joseph borrowed several of the oaths and outward manifestations lock, stock, and barrel. But he basically jettisoned almost all of the rest; e.g., he introduced women into the process and dropped the legend of Hyrum Abiff altogether. Moreover, he never pursued the York Rite or Scottish Rite degrees after completing the first three degrees. I know of no convincing evidence that Joseph took Masonry seriously, and I contend that he didn’t take it seriously at all.
Geoff B: It’s fascinating to see people who don’t even come close to their accomplishments trying to bash Nibley and Daniel Peterson.
First, the part about Nibley begs the question, because it’s his supposed accomplishments that I’m contesting.
Second, using your reasoning, it’s wrong for you to criticize Bertrand Russell’s atheism given his accomplishments. Nor should anyone criticize Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Lock, Berkeley, Hume, or Mill because of their accomplishments.
Third, you have no idea what my accomplishments are. In fact, with three notable exceptions (getting banned from T&S, getting thrown out of the MTC, and getting thrown out of BYU) I am careful never to discuss my accomplishments online.
In summary, Geoff, your statement is just plain idiotic. All the really accomplished thinker disagree with each other. Critical and analytical thinkers learn to make up their own minds.
Almost all self-described critical and analytical thinkers I’ve met dismissed everyone who disagreed with as idiots, stupid, or intellectually dishonest, so one thing we can say in your favor, DKL, is that you’re true to type.
That’s great, Adam. Two comments after I present a very respectful argument in answer to Clark, you’ve decided that I never disagree with anyone except that I liken them unto you.
If anyone is further interested in Dan Peterson’s contributions to the bloggernacle, his guest posts at Times and Seasons can be read here: http://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php?author=28&poststart=1 . He’s had several lengthy
dust-upsexchanges with other commenters. One of them is here and another is here.(And to forestall a likely flood of requests from the group, let me note that, despite my connection to DP as a former guest-blogger on T & S, I cannot acquire signed photographs, books, posters, or other DP merchandise for any of you. You’ll just have to go through the fan club like everyone else).
That’s a fair response DKL. One could interpret it as Masonry providing this for Joseph (along with much else). I thought you were saying something a little more strong. i.e. that it was for pure expediency with no connection to an inspired process. That I find harder to accept. i.e. that all Masonry was simply arbitrary.
As for the apostate endowment, I’m sure you know the references. But for everyone else I’ll provide a few.
I’m the rare exception then, who is stupid, idiotic, and intellectually dishonest even when I’m not disagreeing with you? How thrilling. The cachet.
#74, still true to type.
DKL,
Jack was apparently right (#46) — you fully intended to wave that anti-Nibley wand again. I think that particular self-marketing trick of yours is too dirty and low for you to keep coming back to over and over. I’ve seen you try to get a rise out of people by using it several times now. It goes something like this:
a. Brodie wrote a JS biography you like and that has some merit despite some weaknesses (like her mind-reading attempts)
b. Nibley wrote a response that you don’t like and that has some real weaknesses itself
c. Therefore Nibley was a second rate scholar, not intelligent, or he was a liar (or as you like to put it “intellectually dishonest”)
You know as well as all of us that your logic is severely flawed. If Nibley was a rock star then maybe we would concede that “No M’am” was the equivalent of an album track and not his best work. But just because the Beatles had a few duds in their albums does not mean they were “second rate” rock stars, bad musicians, or musical frauds. If you could show that Nibley was a hack based on the body of his work (and accounting for the time that has passed since they were published) you might have a leg to stand on. (And yes, I think that Nibley is the Mormon studies equivalent of the Beatles). But this anti-Nibley tune you keep whistling is below you, and perhaps even intellectually dishonest in its own right. You have plenty of interesting things to say without this cheap publicity stunt you keep pulling.
BTW — I’m looking forward to your paper. Where do you plan to publish it?
Adam, you don’t have to think yourself a critical or analytical thinker in order to consider others as stupid, idiotic or intellectually dishonest. This thread is proof.
Kaimi (#75)
Thanks for the reminder — I had forgotten about those. Good times, back when I actually had a moment or two to spare . . . .
Everyone is stupid, idiotic and intellectually dishonest, except for those choice souls who agree with Prudence on everything.
I agree with everybody all the time.
Clark, I think that you mistyped the dates for that quote. The passage that you site was written ca. 1885. B. F. Johnson himself died in 1905 (not 1846, as your tag line indicates). By this time, there was all sorts of nonsense floating around about Masonry and Mormonism. B. F. Johnson is also considered an unreliable witness in his own right, since his reminiscences late in life contain numerous errors and exaggerations. And his account is uncorroborated by any contemporary source. In short, I consider it to be an unreliable account.
Prudence, how do you do with your interpersonal relationships? Do you by any chance have any friends? I will be your friend if you need one. Maybe we can get together sometime and watch the classic movie PollyAnna. Or maybe you would opt for Mommy Dearest? Both classics at any rate. –A concerned potential and highly unjudgemental friend.
Adam Greenwood, if you care to look at an example of some crank accusing his opponent of being stupid and dishonest, the best place to look is the electronic version of “No Ma’am, That’s not History.” It’s practically Hugh Nibley’s defining attribute as an apologist.
I think the date is the date covered by the autobiography, DKL.
DKL: “if you care to look at an example of some crank accusing his opponent of being stupid and dishonest. . . It’s practically Hugh Nibley’s defining attribute as an apologist”
Flatly untrue and ridiculous.
Geoff Johnston, there are no “duds” on any of our albums.
Prudence, I wish you had come out of the Maharishi’s ashram once in awhile to play with the Fab Four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meditation is great. But all you really need is love.
Don’t worry, I’m mostly thinking of a few of George’s songs, not yours John. (And welcome back by the way — we’ve missed you.)
LOL, Mr. Peterson, I’ve never heard of any of you guys! I had heard of Nibley, but I am the least educated on the blogging. No college degree here. Also early senility looming.
However, I still couldn’t get into those books. Maybe I needed a guru to lead me through them. I didn’t appreciate Screwtape or The Great Divorce until my biology professor friend explained them to me.
I didn’t think he was an idiot, but it was hard for me to find the points he was making in all the words and lack of proper paragraphing. When there are long paragraphs, I get confused. It’s a mental disability. So I gave up. Teresa of Avila annoys me the same way. Paragraphs,people,and keep them short if you want me to read your posts.
I’m a little lost on the masonic reference, but I’ll tell you this: if somebody could PROVE to me that Joseph did that to secretly institute polygamy, this is what I would think: God, the father and Jesus appeared to him. The Book of Mormon is true and the plan of salvation is the truest description of life as we know it, and can understand it, that I know.
But, hey, I agree with all of you.
Geoff, I reject your proposed logic as a straw-man.
I’m ready to admit and discuss the weaknesses of Brodie’s biography. But the mind reading charge is among the lamest that can be leveled against a biographer. Of course she attempts to do some mind reading. This is not a weakness–it’s a hallmark of the biography trade! All biographers must make some attempt to deduce the thoughts and motivations of their subjects. If you want to see a real attempt at mind-reading, take a look at Bushman’s presentation to the MHA, in which he posits that Joseph’s outlook on eternal families was caused by an idealization of his family life due to the weaknesses and failures of Joseph Smith, Sr. Why doesn’t FARMS write a snide essay about Bushman’s deeply psycho-biographical presentation? Because it applies one set of standards to those friendly to Mormonism, and another set of standards otherwise.
I focus on “No Ma’am, That’s Not History,” because I found it to be typical of the quality of work that Nibley turned out, not because it’s the only thing (or even the first thing) that I read by him. I’ve subsequently gone on to learn a great deal more about Joseph Smith, so it remains the one that I’m most readily equipped to criticize. Given that it’s been 15 years since I’ve read anything of Nibley’s (before skimming the electronic version of “No Ma’am, That’s not History” today), and given that I don’t much care to return to him now, and given that I wasn’t prone to taking detailed notes on what I read at the time (as I do now), I don’t have (and don’t care to have) much else to refer to.
At any rate, this is no cheap publicity stunt. I brought up Nibley because his apologetic work is the archetypal hatchet job that we see occasionally repeated in the FARMS review. Dan Peterson focused in on it, and the result is thus.
Nibley was either incompetent or a charlatan. The day will never come when some non-Mormon scholar comes across his work and exclaims, “Wow! This is a gold mine! I can’t believe we weren’t listening to this guy!” Mormons continue to greet his writings with enthusiasm, because his pretended scholarly tone startles and excites the interest of readers thirsty for some hope that Mormon doctrines can be justified by genuine scholarly standards. It’s not my place to say whether pointing this out is beneath me.
As far as my paper, I’m going to propose it for presentation at next year’s MHA conference in Casper, WY (I’ll know if it is accepted by Jan. 2006), and I’ll see if I can get it published in Dialogue (but who knows?). I think that the idea that Joseph was running two churches in Nauvoo provides a unifying, cohesive framework that makes sense of a lot disparate, chaotic facts that have hitherto simply served as fodder for folks at Signature Books who are much better at doing research than at actually doing history (though there won’t be so much as a hint of apologetics in the essay).
annegb, don’t worry. The two church thesis (and the thesis that Joseph didn’t actually take Masonic claims seriously) is actually quite friendly to the church and to faithful history. It makes sense of a lot of things that have hitherto been considered by many historians (even some Mormon historians) to be more or less arbitrary or inexplicable. (The two church thesis and the Masonic turn were actually ideas advanced by the man to whom Dalin H. Oaks referred all the questions about Masonry that came to the Quorum of the Twelve, though he never published anything about the two church thesis and he never plainly stated his theory on the Masonic turn.)
And though my testimony certainly needs a lot of work, and though I do struggle with my faith continually, I am not a doubting Mormon. Nor do I wish to write things that lead people away from the gospel or induce doubting or questioning of faith. (I’ll leave that to the apologists and the disaffected Mormons.)
Come on DKL; you say my logic is a straw man and then you go on to disprove your own claim by again whistling the exact tune I described in my post. “I love Brodie and I hated Nibley’s response”. Then you further weaken your argument by admitting that you have not read any Nibley in 15 years and that you didn’t take good notes when you did read him!
You say “Nibley was either incompetent or a charlatan.” How on earth would you know? You haven’t even read any of his work in 15 years (presumably when you were in college still).
Nibley specialized in Ancient Scripture — what evidence is there that his work in his field of expertise was incompetent? What evidence do you have that he was a charlatan in his field?
DKL: “The day will never come when some non-Mormon scholar comes across his work and exclaims, ‘Wow! This is a gold mine! I can’t believe we weren’t listening to this guy!'”
Actually, Gordon Thomasson tells me that Mircea Eliade (the great scholar of comparative religions at the University of Chicago) responded in words much to that effect when Thomasson, then a graduate student, lent Eliade some books by Nibley.
And I like the remarks about Nibley’s alleged pseudoscholarship that appear in the essay (published in the Trinity Journal and widely available on the web) by the evangelical scholars Carl Mosser and Paul Owen, entitled “Mormon Scholarship, Apologetics, and Evangelical Neglect: Losing the Battle and Not Knowing It?” Neither Owen nor Mosser is a friend of Mormonism, and neither is even slightly reluctant to go head to head with Latter-day Saint scholarship — I’ve known them for years, and even participated in a formal debate with them before a national academic body — but they have the grace, class, maturity, and judgment to recognize that “Nibley is a scholar of high caliber.”
Based on my experience with his work in ancient history — which, as opposed to modern Church history, a subject on which he wrote reluctantly and, not uncommonly, by assignment, was his academic specialty — I hold Nibley in high esteem. I’ve certainly found his work a “gold mine,” though I do not by any stretch find him infallible. (I’ve differed with him in print and have published articles by others that take him to task on this or that point.) I once spent several weeks, in graduate school, pursuing some of the Arabic sources that he used in his essay on “Qumran and the Companions of the Cave.” I was very much impressed by his mastery of the relevant materials, which are by no means easy to find or to interpret. Dismissing Nibley as “either incompetent or a charlatan” is simply noxious blather.
Incidentally, as to Masonry being an “apostate endowment”:
In a letter from Heber C. Kimball to Parley Pratt dated 17 June 1842, Elder Kimball wrote that “there is a similarity of preas Hood in Masonry. Bro. Joseph Ses Masonry was taken from preasthood but has become degenerated. But menny things are perfect.”
Later, at a 9 November 1858 meeting in Salt Lake City, Elder Kimball elaborated that “We have the true Masonry. The Masonry of today is received from the apostasy which took place in the days of Solomon and David. They have now and then a thing that is correct, but we have the real thing.”
For references, see Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 85.
Has it occurred to anyone else to wonder what “DKL” stands for? Perhaps DarK Lord? Or Devil Kills Light? Or Damn Kooky Loon? Once you think about it, it’s obvious.
I find that if I hold my crucifix up to the monitor when DKL’s comments are on the screen, the light starts to flicker, I feel overpowered by a feeling of dread, and that darned “Damien Omen” Gregorian chant starts blaring through the speakers. I feel like the Prophet Joseph in the Sacred Grove, right before the light hits. Except I haven’t had my vision yet. Give me a few more weeks, and I bet it’ll come.
As for comment #84, yes I have friends, thank you very much. I have LOTS of friends. Probably my best friend is the Book of Mormon, with whom I seem to spend every waking hour these days (when I’m not calling all the internet heathens to repentence). Do YOU have friends? I’d rather have no friends that fraternize with the faithless, pseudo-intellectual pondscum that loiters around these parts.
John Lennon — Maybe all I need is love, but it appears what you need is a little less free love, and a little more Mormon indoctrination. I recommend anything and everything by Bruce R. McConkie, my personal hero, who was the closet thing to infallibility this world has seen, present company excluded.
Ah, Dan, you brought up two of the quotes I was going to. I think DKL has a point about Utah era recollections. Certainly Brigham Young infused Mormonism with a lot of Masonry (and vice versa). It doesn’t follow that Young’s assumptions were correct. Such as his adoption uncritically of the Solomon myths in Masonry. But I think he’s incorrect about it only being latter traditions.
Further, I think DKL’s masonic thesis does answer some critics, such as Brent Metcalf. Having said that though, I have a hard time seeing Masonry simply being adopted pragmatically with not essential truth in it. (For a wide variety of reasons)
There were a few other quotes I was going to provide. But since they all date to the later half of the 19th century, I’m sure DKL’s objection will remain. (Such as the Scovil letter to the Deseret News in 1884) I’m not sure when you have so many recalling such things but what some of your skepticism ought be tempered. But I can at least understand it.
David, I’m glad to hear that, I was worried. I also can doubt certain things and not be bothered by my basic commitment and covenants.
Everybody: I don’t think David is a lightweight by any means. What he says holds weight with me, I ignore the smart aleck stuff.
I wonder here if this isn’t a case of the emporor’s new clothes. Maybe Hugh Nibley was a charasmatic person, maybe he had a lot of wisdom, but he was human, he could have been wrong sometimes. I think it’s dangerous to put people on such a high pedestal that we can’t see when they make a mistake.
And Daniel, like I said, I’ve never heard of you, I respect your loyalty and love for your friend, but perhaps that colors what you say, maybe you can’t be objective. In your mind, did Hugh Nibley ever call it wrong, or confusedly (if that’s a word?)? And David, the same goes for Fawn Brodie. Nobody’s perfect.
Well, Daniel Peterson, I’m relieved to learn that you’ve actually turned up someone willing to say that someone else did say that they found Nibley to be a gold mine. It’s not dispositive, but at least it’s something. Even so, I’m aghast that you do not see that Nibley is accusing Brodie of being dishonest and stupid in “No Ma’am That’s not History.” For the record, I’m quite biased against and suspect of apologetics in general. So we’re approaching Nibley from opposite corners. At some point we’re just going to have to accept that we both view the other’s position on Nibley to be noxious blather. That said, I’ll give you the last word on the matter if you care to take it.
As far as the apostate endowment and quotes from the Utah period, Clark brings up a good point about why my skepticism is so thoroughgoing. Once the Utah period began, church leaders tended to read its understanding of Joseph’s doctrines back into everything that he’d ever taught. These got exaggerated and propagated, and this resulted in an awful lot of derivative sources for things that never happened and weren’t based on truth. (e.g., Joseph’s fabled exposition on the wonders of Masonry when he was elevated to Master Mason [which Kenneth Godfrey repeats in his “Joseph Smith and the Masons”], or the legend that the Nauvoo Lodge was cut off from the Grand Lodge because it changed the ceremony or the fantastic notion that the Royal Arch degree was known by the Bedouins of Arabia, which also attributed some divine origin to the additional Scottish Rite degrees–a position to which Joseph surely did not adhere). This is particularly true of Joseph’s Nauvoo doctrines, which were most controversial among those who elected not to follow Brigham west. Given this tendency and the known errors (some of which I refer to above), I deem statements about Masonry made past the start of the Utah period to be more indicative of the new doctrinal fervor for Joseph’s Nauvoo doctrines than of historical truth.
Regarding Kimball’s letter to Pratt, I’ve seen that on Jeff Lindsey’s site. It’s important to know the following: though the letter is dated 3 months after the institution of Joseph’s induction into Masonry and the granting of the charter for the Nauvoo Lodge, Kimball himself joined the Masons in 1825 (as Lindsay points out).
The stuff that Kimball attributes to Joseph in his letter certainly was not something that Joseph was shouting from the rooftops–the scant number of contemporary sources that put such words in Joseph’s mouth attests to this. I contend that either
I believe that treating it this way is more consistent with the overall evidence, some of which I’ve sketched out below. At any rate, that’s where I am with Kimball’s letter. I’m still working on other sources, so I may develop a different opinion over time.
Regarding the truth of Masonry, I do not believe that a shred of it dates to antiquity, so I don’t see why God would tell Joseph that it was really important.
Keep in mind that Joseph was also well acquainted with Masonry. His brother was a member of the Nauvoo lodge. Also the Captain Morgan affair (William Morgan published the Masonic ritual and disappeared, resulting in accusations of Masonic foul play that brought anti-Masonic fervor into the mainstream of American society. An aside: In what is surely one of the most intriguing coincidences in Mormon history, William Morgan’s wife/widow became a Mormon and was sealed to Joseph Smith as a plural wife) brought attention to the publication of the secret Masonic rituals and even brought public re-enactments of the rituals to the areas surrounding Joseph’s home. As Mervin Hogan points out, “Joseph Smith had known for a decade and a half more than he could have possibly have learned quickly about Masonry by acquiring formal membership in the Order at Nauvoo.” (p 278, Hogan, Mervin B. “Mormonism and Freemasonry: The Illinois Episode.†In Little Masonic Library, ed. Silas H. Shepherd, Lionel Vibert, and Roscoe Pound, Vol. 2, pp. 267-326. Richmond, Va., 1977.)
The thesis that Joseph did not take the Masonic rituals seriously is not a new one. Though Hogan does not directly advocate the idea, he is quite effective in shooting down arguments to the contrary in several of his essays. Cecil McGavin’s book (also sited by Lindsay and online at here), argues that Joseph sought Masonry due to its prestige and never took the rituals terribly seriously. (Though the book is somewhat dated and overly general.)
The way that I see it is this: Joseph decides to join Masonry only after (a) he is rebuffed after discussing the possibility of legalized polygamy in a sermon and has to make a public retraction, and (b) he is approached by Abraham Jonas (seeking the Mormon vote in his bid for the state legislature) and James Adams (a Mormon hoping to lend prestige to Mormonism through its association with Masonry) about a Lodge in Nauvoo. This Lodge then becomes the secret incubator for Joseph’s new doctrines of deity, the Nauvoo temple covenants, and the practice of plural marriage. I think that this thesis answers far more questions than it raises.
I’ve explicitly said, only a few inches above, that I did not and do not regard Hugh Nibley as infallible, and that I have disagreed with him publicly and in print.
The question isn’t whether Hugh was infallible. I never claimed he was, and he never claimed he was. I’ve expressly said otherwise. I’ve never denied that he was human or capable of mistakes. The issue has nothing whatever to do with affection.
The question is whether Hugh was “stupid,” “intellectually dishonest,” and worthy only of summary dismissal as “either incompetent or a charlatan.” I find such suggestions objectively false and, in fact, utterly ridiculous.
Okay, fair enough. I stick up for my friends, too.
Someday, if I don’t lose my marbles or die (please, God, I am so ready), maybe somebody will guide me through it. His work, I mean. Not you, I’m not hinting. I’m doing a wedding. Later, I’ll get on it. Or not.
David, check out Unofficial manifesto.
Geoff, your proposed argument is a straw man. My real argument goes like this:
1. “No Ma’am That’s not History” really stinks
2. Nibley never wrote anything any better than “No Ma’am That’s not History”
3. The predicate stinks is transitive
4. Thus, everything that Nibley wrote stinks.
You’ll notice that this is good logic. We may disagree on premise 1 or 2 (or both), but that’s an entirely separate issue.
Surprisingly DKL, I’ll turn around your anti-apologetic approach. To me the no serious Masonry theory smacks of what I dislike in apologetics. It is too convenient and simply works by explaining away all evidence that doesn’t fit what one wants to be true. i.e. everyone in the Utah period was wrong about their memories and Kimball (among others) were simply misunderstanding.
I say its too convenient because Masonry is, in certain ways, an inconvenience for apologists. How can you have a revelation to has so much Masonry in it? (The endowment ceremony) It seems the “didn’t take it seriously” thesis has its greatest difficulty here. Masonry is just a convenient shorthand for revelation. It allows us to simply discard all the extensive Masonry and Masonic imagery from our past, which most today find alien and uncomfortable. Further, as I mentioned, it allows too conveniently one to explain away Brent Metcalf’s and others criticisms about Masonry not being ancient (despite the claims of Young and others)
Which brings me to my final point about the ancient nature of Masonry. Clearly the purported origins are nonsense. There was no Hirum Abiff nor secrets stolen from Solomon’s temple. Almost certainly the whole Templar stuff is both a late addition to Masonry as well as being nonsense. Having said all that, I simply think Mormon apologists who discard out of hand the Renaissance philosophy influences on Masonry are being a tad disingenuous. Especially when those Renaissance ideas and symbols came about by the discovery of the very kind of texts that Apologists were touting as the evidence for the ancient nature of Mormonism and the endowment. (Well before the rise of so called hermetic investigations of Mormonism by Brooke, Quinn and in a rather horrible way Owens)
Once again, it’s too convenient. It makes the apologist task too easy. Suddenly all these gnostic, hermetic and other near eastern mysteries can be held up as independent proof of the prophetic status of Joseph. It cuts off the claim that Joseph got the symbols from his environment.
And yes, I recognize that the apologist can turn the tale his way with either reading. If Masonry was, as Yates suggests, taken out of Rosicrucianism and the like, then the apologist can claim the mid-19th century views of apostate endowment and the like were true. We end up with the corrupt remnants of ideas we find in Merkabah texts and Gnostic texts like Jeu. If Masonry was, as you suggest, simply a structural convenience to present a ritual and to guard secrets, then the apologist can claim that the truths are eternal and these ancient texts evidence Joseph’s prophetic insight.
Interestingly I’m fast coming upon this very question as I engage with Nibley’s underlying philosophy on my blog. Next up is a more philosophical consideration of what Nibley understands by the mysteries.
DKL: “3. The predicate stinks is transitive.”
Could you please explain (3)? How can a predicate (as opposed to a verb) be transitive? If the verb stinks or to stink is transitive — something I’m not sure that I’ve encountered before in English — what does the predicate “stink”? What is the object of the transitive verb to stink?
I don’t get it, and don’t see how your argument requires (3) anyway.
For the record, I reject (1) and (2). Thus, since I reject (1) and (2) and find (3) wholly opaque and irrelevant, I see no reason to accept (4).
But I’m still trying to imagine sentences like “The way Jack behaves really stinks the party,” and “That skunk is going to stink the room,” and “The Cubs stink the league.”
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk! You are obnoxious but funny, DKL (#102).
Along with Daniel I reject your #2 (I am ambivalent about your #1). You are especially on shaky ground with #2 since you haven’t read any of Nibley’s best stuff at least since college and possibly never at all (I am admittedly only about 40% through his collected works myself).
If you weren’t just being belligerent at this point you could just amend your ridiculous and offensive claims that Brother Nibley was “stupid,” “intellectually dishonest,” and worthy only of summary dismissal as “either incompetent or a charlatan.” Why not just say “I hated his response to the Brodie work and vowed to never read him again after reading it”? This stubborn and prideful stance you have taken might get you some attention but you know you can’t support your broad accusations against the man. That is why I assumed you insist on beating this drum as a personal publicity stunt – it certainly gets you some attention.
Look, feel free to attack the quality “No M’am” if you want, but please be fair to this man that I and many others hold in high regard.
Clark, history is full of widespread fables that grew to be widely accepted and repeated after only a few years. In other areas of Mormon history there are the transformation of Brigham Young and the miracle of the sea gulls. But these are quite independent of the number of legends surrounding Masonry in particular that are clearly false (I’ve sited a few in my preceding comment). There are even Utah accounts of Masonic practices being found among the Indians (related by Richard Burton’s history), all of which are quite obviously false. Clearly, a lot of stuff got made up about Masonry, and I just don’t see how any of it can be trusted when there is such scanty support in contemporary documents.
Quite aside from my historical pursuits, I see no doctrinal need to trace any element of the temple ceremony to any date at all. Nor do I see any need to locate historical precedents. And I certainly have no problem at all with the position that the endowment comes almost entirely out of Joseph Smith’s environment. All that matters doctrinally is that Joseph was fulfilling a commandment when he crafted the Nauvoo endowment. To suppose that he was given an elaborate blueprint comes far too close (in my view) to what Arrington labels the marionette fallacy. One thing is, I believe, is very clear: Joseph did not seem to draw a strong distinction between the general commandments that he received and his particular interpretation or application of those commandments. Thus, Joseph seemed to act as though everything that he did in the capacity of fulfilling a commandment was directly inspired.
From an historical point of view, I see Masonry as both a structural convenience and source for dramatic oaths involving ritual disembowelment. And I consider ancient texts about handshakes, veils, and rituals to be evidence that the same factors which led to the creation of my college fraternity’s ritual was has been operative in civilization for thousands of years; they are no more evidence that Joseph is a prophet than they are that the creators of my fraternity’s rituals were prophets.
As far as the preparation of my paper, I’m still sorting through a lot of sources, so I’m sure that my view will evolve as I absorb additional information. Bertrand Russell once wrote, “I should make it my object to teach thinking, not orthodoxy or even heterodoxy. And I should absolutely never sacrifice knowledge to the supposed interest of morals” and I agree with this sentiment. I intend to follow the evidence (as best I can) wherever it leads. I see no apologetic role for this thesis; but I do think that the notion of two separate churches in Nauvoo is a cohesive framework that brings a lot of order to an otherwise very chaotic set of events. It’s a very large thesis with far reaching implications. For example, in the underground church, the Quorum of the Twelve operated as an executive body over and above a bishop or high counsellor, while in the above ground church had no very clear executive structure beyond the first presidency (D&C revelations about the equality of the general authority quorums notwithstanding). Thus, the battle between the first presidency (in Sidney Rigdon) and the Quorum of the Twelve (in Brigham) was not a basically arbitrary political struggle brought on by a leadership vacuum as it is often depicted. It was very much a battle between the leaders of the aboveground and the leaders of the underground church, both of whom had legitimate claims to authority in their respective spheres. Thus, the ascendancy of the Brigham as leader is also the ascendancy of the executive structure of the underground church.
I’m no scholar and never will be, but (if I may venture) what about Nibley’s gift for languages. How many could he speak, let alone read? What about his incredible power of retention? He could quote anything from Shakespeare and a multitude of other classics. He could quote tons of stuff from sources in many different languages right off the top of his head!
Now perhaps, not being a scholar, my naivete is showing and I’ll one day learn that such abilities ought to be par for the scholar’s course. But until then, I’ll have to consider him a genious as with what little intelligence I possess by comparison to Nibley I’m able to deduce that it would require multiple lifetimes for me to acquire Nibley’s abilities–let alone his knowledge.
Daniel Peterson, I’ll explain how a predicate (as opposed to a verb) can be transitive, if you’ll explain what “I find such suggestions objectively false” means. If it’s only what you find to be the case, than how is it objective? But more to the point, what type of falsehood is it that you wish to distinguish objective falsehood from? Subjective falsehood?
Daniel Peterson, I don’t think anybody’s going to think any less of you if you just give up on this discussion with DKL. Having a logical argument with him appears to be a waste of time.
Anybody else notice the complete lack of the Spirit in this thread?
Personally, I enjoyed Daniel Peterson’s article, and DKL, I’m afraid, strikes me as a pretentious, insufferable, lightweight intellectual dilletante.
But that’s just my kinder self being diplomatic. However, in the arcane and recondite recesses of my mind, I have occasionally admitted that I was wrong.
El Jefe: DKL, I’m afraid, strikes me as a pretentious, insufferable, lightweight intellectual dilletante
Suit yourself.
Daniel Peterson: Could you please explain (3)? How can a predicate (as opposed to a verb) be transitive? If the verb stinks or to stink is transitive — something I’m not sure that I’ve encountered before in English — what does the predicate “stink”? What is the object of the transitive verb to stink?
Here’s a bonus comment for you, Daniel Peterson. Since logic (as logic) is a rather specialized skill, I don’t begrudge you the following technical usage: In logic, a two place predicate Fxy is transitive when the following is always true:
if (Fxy and Fyz) then Fxz
If I were more interested in being precise than simply rhetorical effect, I’d have used the predicate “stinks as much as.”
Daniel Peterson: I don’t get it, and don’t see how your argument requires (3) anyway.
My argument does indeed need of some premise that establishes that “if x stinks as much as y, and y stinks as much as z, then x stinks as much as z” in order for my conclusion to follow. This is because, not all two place predicates are transitive (e.g., the predicate “is indistinguishable”; it is not necessarily true that “if x is indistinguishable from y, and y is indistinguishable from z that x is indistinguishable from z”)
Even so, I’m still interested in your explication of objective falsehood.
Geoff B,
The lack of the Spirit in this thread is the result of it being spawned by an article which entirely lacked anything but the spirit of contention. Aside from the thread’s apparent lack of edifying content, I have learned some things:
1) Daniel Peterson is perfectly willing to debate the relative merits of other people’s work, but not his own.
2) Anyone can post offensive and irrelevant content (e.g., personal attacks, mockery, threats of physical violence, hypocritical accusations) on M* and not be censured (except snarky snarker curt Kurt), especially if youre an anonymous coward or long time member of the bloggernakker clique.
3) Some bloggernakkers stay up way too late arguing about inconsequential stuff which will soon be forgotten. They are way too willing to sacrifice sleep in the pursuit of e-glory, e-laud, and e-honor, and will be having a long, rough day today.
Kurt, the problem may be centered in your unwillingness to spell “Bloggernaccer” with c’s instead of k’s. Your spelling brings the group closer to mega-band Dokken, which nobody wants.
Dokken is a rokken! /*horned hands in the air*/
Who said there is any problem, Steve? None of the things I have learned present any problems at all as far as I can see. Wheres the problem?
1.
I understand the property of relations that R is transitive iff, whenever R relates x to y and y to z, then it relates x directly to z, such that, if Rxy and Ryz, then Rxz. My problem is that I don’t see that property really instantiated in (3), that I don’t see the related grammatical property of transitivity exemplified in (3), and that (3) continues to seem unnecessary to establish (4) even were one misguidedly to grant both (1) and (2).
Thus, reformulating (1) and (2) slightly, somewhat along the lines of what follows — and there are plenty of other ways of formulating the argument; this one is somewhat hastily done and therefore awkwardly expressed or cumbersome — would have been enough to establish (4) without need of the problematic (3):
1. All instances of purported scholarly work of or below the quality of “No Ma’am That’s not History” may accurately be dismissed as poor scholarship.
2. All instances of Nibley’s purported scholarly work are of or below the quality of “No Ma’am That’s Not History.”
4. Thus, all instances of Nibley’s purported scholarly work may accurately be dismissed as poor scholarship.
This is a simple syllogism in basic classical logic. It is, although awkwardly expressed, of precisely the same logical form (two A or universal affirmative propositions as premises, and a conclusion; two relations between three terms; etc.) as the famous syllogism
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man. [= All persons identical with Socrates are men.]
Therefore, Socrates is mortal. [= Therefore, all persons identical with Socrates are mortal.]
There is no need to invoke anything more sophisticated. This syllogism is entirely valid, as could easily be illustrated by a Venn diagram, and, apart from its factual falsehood, accomplishes what you seek to accomplish.
2.
I’m happy to explain what I mean by saying that claims like “Nibley was stupid” and “Nibley was incompetent” are “objectively false.” I intend to say that such claims can be demonstrated to be untrue to the satisfaction of any reasonable and unjaundiced observer by the application to his writings of not just one but a number of standards of judgment.
Your disagreement with Nibley’s scholarship is one thing, though, even so, it strikes me as grossly exaggerated and overdrawn (perhaps for reasons of rhetorical self-gratification or in order to be pointlessly provocative). But your absurd suggestion that Nibley was simply, altogether and in all his work, “stupid” or “incompetent” cannot even remotely be sustained as plausible on the basis of a serious reading of what he wrote. Your persistence in the suggestion damages your credibility — which is unfortunate since, although I (at least) find aspects of it problematic and dubious thus far, your proposal regarding Nauvoo Masonry seems worthy of serious discussion.
3.
Geoff B.’s suggestion to me in #109, above, seems to me to have considerable merit, and I intend to act on it.
This thread is now closed for posting. Thank you for playing.