Latter-day Saint FAIR-Cast

Please remember to see the film Witnesses! In this episode, Hanna talks with actors Caleb and Paul who play Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith respectively about what it was like to play these characters and to talk more about the film. Actor Paul described playing Joseph Smith as the role of a lifetime and actor Caleb was largely introduced to Latter-day Saint religion through this film. This conversation does not disappoint! Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. Her interests thematically center around sacrifice, magic, and priesthood as it pertains to ancient Judaism, early Christianity, ancient Egyptian religion, and early Restoration history. The post FAIR Voice #35: Witnesses pt. 2 with actors for Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 8 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the eighth of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) Somehow, in addition to his continual immersion in ancient records and the pressing religious and social issues of the day, Hugh Nibley managed to keep up with important new developments in an impressive range of scientific subjects: cosmology, physics, and brain science — to name but a few of his chief interests. And one of his lesser-known gems is an essay entitled “Science Fiction and the Gospel.” The expansive framework of the Restored Gospel accommodated new findings in nearly all of these fields without a hitch. However, on the subjects of death before the Fall of Adam and Eve and the origins of humankind, faithful members sometimes disagreed.[2] Leaders and members of the Church who made statements strongly expressing the view that no death existed on earth before the Fall generally were not intrinsically unsympathetic to science, but naturally resisted any views that might be seen as compromising authoritatively expressed doctrines relating to the Creation, the Fall, and the Atonement. Likewise, scientifically-trained leaders and members were not typically seeking to subordinate the claims of faith to the program of science, but understandably desired to circumscribe their understanding of truth into “one great whole.”[3] In this regard, Elder Harold B. Lee, a staunch advocate of the idea that there was no death before the Fall, spoke approvingly of a story recounted by Latter-day Saint scientist Harvey Fletcher about President Joseph F. Smith’s reply to questions posed to him at BYU about the topic of evolution:[4] After listening patiently, he replied: “Brethren, I don’t know very much about science. It has not been my privilege to study… deeply… any of the sciences, but this I do know, that God lives, and that His Son instituted this church here upon the earth for the salvation of men. Now brethren, you have that testimony, and I’ve heard you bear it. It’s your job to try and see how these seeming difficulties can be overcome.” Consistent with this charge by President Smith, Hugh Nibley, a very well-read amateur scientist, and a faithful disciple-scholar, occasionally stepped into the fray. A. Noël Pisano: Negative of Hand and Red Dots, Cavern of Pech-Merle. Cabarets, France, original made ca. 23,000 BC,; B. Seven Hands, Cavern of Pech-Merle, Cabarets, France. A well-honed technique allowed negativse of the hands, surrounded by symbols whose meaning is now is lost to us, to be preserved tens of thousands of years later as ancient snapshots, the sole remaining memories of the lives of these individuals. Hugh Nibley, with his deep love of God’s creatures,[5] had great sympathy for the ancient individuals about whom so much evidence had been discovered and authoritatively dated to long periods that antedated Bible history. He pondered long and hard about how their stories might fit in with those of Adam and Eve. For a thoughtful perspective on this issue, we can do no better than to cite him directly:[6] The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, in his Essay on the Christian System, said that the two fatal flaws of Christianity were (1) denying spirit and mind to any other creatures but ourselves and (2) allowing life on no other world but our own. … This … should be no concern [for us]. … It is Adam as my own parent who concerns me. When he walks onto the stage, then and only then the play begins. He opens a book and starts calling out names. They are the sons of Adam, who also qualify as the sons of God, Adam himself being a son of God. This is the book of remembrance from which many have been blotted out. Is the Bible a comprehensive history of every individual and creature that has ever lived on earth? By way of analogy, it should be remembered that the Book of Mormon, as a history of those who were Nephites by lineage or “adoption,” records only incidentally the story of the Lamanites and their associates.[7] So also the Book of Moses tells us very little about the history of the Cainites or of the children of Adam that were born before Cain and Abel[8] who “followed Satan by choice and were disqualified as sons of God.”[9] The account instead focuses on the inauguration of temple ordinances among the righteous, which began, as Nibley indicates, “when God set them apart, gave them a blessing, gave them a new name, [and] registered them in the new Book of the Generations of Adam.”[10] In light of what scripture tells us, how do we account for the results of genetic studies indicating that every person who has ever lived on earth is descended from a common population of, perhaps, 10,000 founders who lived 100,000 to 150,000 years ago — long before Adam and Eve entered mortality?[11] Drawing on the richer sources of scripture produced through modern revelation, Nibley raised a series of questions with an eye to finding scriptural support for surviving non-Adamic and non-Noachian lineages that might help explain such findings: What about those people who lived before Cain and Abel?[12] What about those who disappeared from sight?[13] What about those who were not even warned of the Flood?[14] … What about the comings and goings of Enoch’s day between the worlds?[15] Who were his people … ?[16] … What about the creatures we do not see around us?[17] Speaking of Noah, … “the Lord said: Blessed is he through whose seed Messiah shall come.”[18] Methuselah boasted about his line as something special.[19] Why special if it included the whole human race? These blessings have no meaning if all the people of the earth and all the nations are the seed of Noah and Enoch. What other line could the Messiah come through? Well, there were humans who were not invited by Enoch’s preaching.[20] Nibley no doubt was wondering whether some of these shadowy peoples described in scripture might be neither descendants of Noah nor of Adam but rather distantly related contemporaries whose descendants may have mixed at various times with the Adamic lineage.[21] Fortunately, as Ryan Parr reminds us, blessings promised through of descendance from patriarchs such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are to be ultimately confirmed through the keeping of covenants associated with the sealing ordinances, not by genetics, since specific “nuclear DNA finding its way from any one of these progenitors to any descendant of today is extremely unlikely from a biological perspective.”[22] In other words, the promises made to the faithful posterity of the patriarchs are not about inheriting fragments of Abrahamic DNA but rather about receiving a fulness of Abrahamic blessings, ultimate assured through one’s faithfulness.[23] Otherwise, the doctrines that describe the possibility of adoption into the Abrahamic lineage would be meaningless.[24] For all these reasons, Nibley encouraged us to keep an open mind. He knew firsthand that God’s heart and mind are “wide as eternity”[25] and that His work to infuse the universe with lasting happiness extends to every one of His creatures:[26] Do not begrudge existence to creatures that looked like men long, long ago, nor deny them a place in God’s affection or even a right to exaltation — for our scriptures allow them such. Nor am I overly concerned as to just when they might have lived, for their world is not our world. They have all gone away long before our people ever appeared. God assigned them their proper times and functions, as He has given me mine — a full-time job that admonishes me to remember His words to the overly eager Moses: “For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.”[27] *** This week, we are pleased to include two short video remembrances about Hugh Nibley, newly recounted by Rebecca Nibley, his daughter. The first video, “Reading with My Dad,” recounts touching scenes of an affectionate father who loved to bond with his young children through unusual reading traditions. The second video, “Movie Night with Dad,” shares a poignant father-daughter conversation after a local viewing of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” The film raised concerns for Rebecca about the former restrictions that prevented men of African descent from being ordained to the priesthood. His full answer to these concerns was not given till one year later. In addition, an Insight entitled “Hugh Nibley’s Love For God’s Creation” is embedded in video form below, along with a more complete podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. The video examines the roots of that love in childhood memories and experiences as a father, and his later efforts to define and model what it means to be a steward over God’s earth and His creatures. Insight – “Hugh Nibley’s Love for God’s Creation” (PDF) Insight – “Hugh Nibley’s Love for God’s Creation” (audio) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Hugh-Nibleys-Love-For-Gods-Creation.mp3 Insight – “Hugh Nibley’s Love for God’s Creation” (video) Reading with My Dad, by Rebecca Nibley Movie Night with My Dad, by Rebecca Nibley References 500,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Viruses Found in Modern Human DNA — (Did We Interbreed?) (November 19, 2013).  In The Daily Galaxy. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2013/11/-500000-year-old-neanderthal-viruses-found-in-modern-human-dna-did-we-interbreed-share-a-language-ge.html. (accessed November 20, 2013). Bailey, David H., Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, John H. Lewis, Gregory L. Smith, and Michael L. Stark, eds. Science and Mormonism: Cosmos, Earth, and Man. Interpreter Science and Mormonism Symposia 1. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2016. https://archive.org/details/CosmosEarthAndManscienceAndMormonism1/160111-scienceAndMormonism1-s. (accessed May 17, 2021). Callaway, Ewen. 2013. Ancient Humans had sex with mystery species, new DNA study shows (November 19, 2013).  In Huffington Post (Science). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/ancient-humans-sex-mystery-species-dna_n_4302031.html. (accessed November 20, 2013). Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York City, NY: Free Press, 2006. Funderburg, Lise. “The changing face of America.” National Geographic, October 2013, 80-91. Hunter, Howard W. The Teachings of Howard W. Hunter. Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1997. Interbreeding?: The relationship between modern humans and Neanderthals.  In Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/ancient-dna-and-neanderthals/interbreeding. (accessed November 20, 2013). Lee, Harold B. The Teachings of Harold B. Lee. Salt Lake City, UT: Bookcraft, 1996. Nibley, Hugh W. 1972. “Man’s dominion or subduing the earth.” In Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, edited by Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 13, 3-22. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1994. ———. 1980. “Before Adam.” In Old Testament and Related Studies, edited by John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum and Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 1, 49-85. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1986. ———. 1986. “Return to the temple.” In Temple and Cosmos: Beyond This Ignorant Present, edited by Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 12, 42-90. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1992. https://mi.byu.edu/book/temple-and-cosmos/. (accessed August 21, 2020). Parr, Ryan. “Missing the boat to ancient America… just plain missing the boat.” The FARMS Review 17, no. 1 (2005): 83-106. Sorenson, John L. An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1985. Walton, John H. The Lost World of Adam and Eve: Genesis 2-3 and the Human Origins Debate. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015. Notes [1] Moses 1:33. [2] See D. H. Bailey et al., Science and Mormonism for a well-rounded and extensive survey by faithful Latter-day Saint scientists and scholars on relevant subjects, including an extensive collection of statements by Church leaders. [3] H. W. Hunter, Teachings 1997, 30 August 1984, p. 182. [4] H. B. Lee, Teachings 1996, 6 June 1953, p. 340. See also ibid.. [5] See, e.g., H. W. Nibley, Dominion. [6] H. W. Nibley, Before Adam, pp. 50, 51, 83. [7] J. L. Sorenson, Ancient, pp. 50-56. [8] Moses 5:12, 16. [9] H. W. Nibley, Before Adam, p. 78 and Moses 7:33, 37. [10] H. W. Nibley, Return, pp. 62-63 and Moses 5:5-9. Cf. Revelation 20:12. [11] For example, F. S. Collins, Language, p. 126 writes: Population geneticists, whose discipline involves the use of mathematical tools to reconstruct the history of populations for animals, plants, or bacteria, look at … facts about the human genome and conclude that they point to all members of our species having descended from a common set of founders, approximately 10,000 in number, who lived about 100,000 to 150,000 years ago. This information fits well with the fossil record, which in turn places the location of those founding ancestors most likely in East Africa. Collins (ibid., pp. 125-126) draws out an implication of this finding: At the DNA level, we are all 99.9 percent identical. That similarity applies regardless of which two individuals from around the world you choose to compare. Thus, by DNA analysis, we humans are truly part of one family. This remarkably low genetic diversity distinguishes us from most other species on the planet, where the DNA diversity is ten or sometimes even fifty times greater than our own. An alien visitor sent here to examine life forms on earth might have many interesting things to say about humankind, but most certainly he would comment on the suprisingly low level of genetic diversity within our species. Collins is noted for his leadership of the Human Genome Project. Currently, he is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A critic of both Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design, he is a proponent of theistic evolution or evolutionary creation, and describes himself as a “serious Christian.” The well-known atheist “Christopher Hitchens referred to Francis Collins as a ‘Great American’ and stated that Collins was one of the most devout believers he had ever met … [Hitchens said] that their friendship despite their differing opinion on religion was an example of the greatest armed truce in modern times” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins#Christianity [accessed January 18, 2016]) [12] Moses 5:12. [13] Moses 7:21. [14] Moses 7:12, 22. [15] Moses 7:27. [16] Moses 6:41. [17] It is unclear who Nibley is referring to, unless he is talking about lines of hominids who have become extinct. [18] Moses 7:51-53. [19] Moses 8:2-3. [20] Moses 7:22. [21] J. H. Walton, Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 185 describes such a scenario: In some models Adam and Eve are thought of as two of the members of a small population of humans and that through the course of time as generation followed generation, their descendants spread through the population and other lines died out such that today everyone has genetic material from these two. This view attempts to place Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 among an en masse creation of humans and still retain the idea that Adam and Eve are the parents of us all. It affirms that Adam and Eve were (among) the first humans and that (through a complex process) we are all descended from Adam and Eve. Though it looks nothing like the traditional biblical interpretation, it makes similar affirmations while at the same time accommodating common descent and affirming that the history evident in the genome actually took place. With reference to a much earlier time than the era of Adam and Eve (no later than approximately 30,000 BCE), there is a growing consensus among researchers that there was a limited amount of interbreeding between the ancestors of today’s humans and Neanderthals that led to modern humans carrying 1-4% of Neanderthal genes (Interbreeding?, Interbreeding?). The authors of one study believe they have “pinpointed the skeletal remains of the first known human- Neanderthal hybrid. … The finding came from northern Italy, where some 40,000 years ago scientists believe Neanderthals and humans lived near each other, but developed separate and distinctly different cultures” (500,000-Year-Old Neanderthal, 500,000-Year-Old Neanderthal). Other researchers “suggest that interbreeding went on between the members of several ancient human-like groups living in Europe and Asia more than 30,000 years ago, including an as-yet unknown human ancestor from Asia” (E. Callaway, Ancient Humans). [22] R. Parr, Missing, pp. 94-97. [23] See, e.g., 4 Nephi 1:35–38. [24] Of course, the chances that someone on earth today is not already a descendant of Abraham are vanishingly slim. See L. Funderburg, Changing Face for a vivid photo essay illustrating the rapid growth of multiracial self-identification in America since it was first included in the US Census in 2000. [25] Moses 7:41. [26] H. W. Nibley, Before Adam, pp. 82–83. [27] Moses 1:31.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post “Worlds Without Number”:[1] Hugh Nibley on Science and Religion appeared first on FAIR.

See his article here: https://publicsquaremag.org/faith/easter-is-reality/ Dan Ellsworth is a consultant and writer living in Charlottesville, Virginia. Dan serves on the Mormon Studies Council at the University of Virginia, and is a contributor to Interpreter and other groups dedicated to improving Latter-Day Saints’ understanding of theology and scripture.     Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. Her interests thematically center around sacrifice, magic, and priesthood as it pertains to ancient Judaism, early Christianity, ancient Egyptian religion, and early Restoration history. The post FAIR Voice #33: Dan Ellsworth on Fowler’s stages appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 7 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the seventh of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) The German class at Camp Ritchie, Maryland. Hugh Nibley is the second person on the left in the last row.[2] War In Alex Nibley’s superb documentary history of his father’s wartime years, he shares Hugh’s account of his departure from Claremont Colleges. Having enjoyed a good relationship as a professor with the university president, Hugh rued the arrival of the new pharaoh[3] after the president died: “He didn’t like Mormons. He said, ‘You know, you are not one of us.’ I could feel the tension growing, so I left. I said, well this certainly justifies me in pursuing a patriotic duty.”[4] Elsewhere Alex continues the story:[5] He was thirty-two years old, a PhD, a classics scholar who had read most of the books in the Berkeley library, and who had also been through several years of ROTC in high school. And so he did the obvious thing and went out and enlisted as a buck private in the army. Hugh related:[6] My first assignment [after basic training[7]]—it was so typically Army you must hear about it: It was the eve of Thanksgiving, and I was scrubbing toilets out with a big brush, with a big scrubbing brush. I was busy scrubbing these latrines out and so forth, and an officer came to me and said, “Come with me and bring the brush.” It was a huge pile of celery; they were preparing it for the officers’ mess the next day. He said, “Clean this celery off.” I said, “But this brush …I just used it for cleaning toilets!” “That doesn’t make any difference, if it looks shiny and clean, that’s the Army; that’s all we want to know.: So there I was cleaning that celery for the officers the next day for their Thanksgiving dinner with a toilet brush. That’s so typically army. I mean it’s marvelous, you know, and it just goes on. Though Hugh approached his first encounter with army culture in a light-hearted way, most of his recollections stress the waste, the futility, the pain, and, above all, the evils of war. He said:[8] [I remember General Bradley said, “War is waste!” And that’s what it is, you see. The utter wastefulness of the thing.] But the wrongness of what we were doing was so strong that everybody would cry. People would cry; they would weep. They would … tears would stream down … the wrongness. It was so utterly unspeakably sad! [It was so sad you could hardly stand it.] That people would do such things to each other. Characteristically, Hugh, though loyal to his duty as a soldier, withdrew emotionally from the frenzy of selfish zeal and ambition that sometimes seemed to surround him on all sides:[9] Men who had been waiting for twenty and thirty years for a war to get into were just itching for it. That was the happy war. It was the chance to get fast promotions. It was the big time; it was the chance for heroics. … There were men, officers, who just reveled in it because it was their life’s career. I’ll tell you if there was anything that puzzled me all the time I was there—I would say, “What on earth am I doing here? Why was I ever put in this situation?” I felt I was just an observer. “Why am I being shown this awful stuff? I don’t want to see it!” Harold Denison, 1870–1943: The Devil Approaches Jabez Stone, 1937.[10]That Nibley refused to get emotionally caught up in the fray did not mean that he doubted for a moment that the battle he was involved in was real and infinitely consequential. But the battle he was watching was not the same battle that preoccupied most of his fellow soldiers:[11] As I listen to our Elders quorums [ringing] out [with] militant hymns every Sunday morning, slashing their swords above the foe, conquering at every step, scattering the hosts of darkness, reveling in the victory of the right — one question keeps recurring to my mind, “Where is the battle?” … The devil is using diversionary tactics to get us on the wrong battlefield. … Satan’s masterpiece of counterfeiting is the doctrine that there are only two choices, and he will show us what they are. It is true that there are only two ways, but by pointing us the way he wants us to take and then showing us a fork in that road, he convinces us that we are making the vital choice, when actually we are choosing between branches in his road. Which one we take makes little difference to him, for both lead to destruction. This is the polarization we find in our world today. Thus we have the choice between Shiz and Coriantumr — which all Jaredites were obliged to make. We have the choice between the wicked Lamanites (and they were that) and the equally wicked (Mormon says “more wicked”) Nephites. Or between the fleshpots of Egypt and the stews of Babylon, or between the land pirates and the sea pirates of World War I, or between white supremacy and black supremacy, or between Vietnam and Cambodia, or between Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers, or between China and Russia, or between Catholic and Protestant, or between fundamentalist and atheist, or between right and left — all of which are true rivals, who hate each other. A very clever move of Satan! … It should be apparent that you take no sides [when you are presented with the devil’s dilemma]. Brent D. Burch: Illustration for an abridged version of Nibley’s controversial talk to the Cannon-Hinckley Club on May 19, 1987.[12]Wealth Nibley recognized that the very same kind of battle is being waged in every sphere of action. In his well-known talk on “Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift,” he chronicled not only the sad leveling of leadership to the low bar of management,[13] but also, more broadly, the reduction of everything of priceless worth to the least common denominator—namely, the clink of cold cash:[14] What are the things of the world? An easy and infallible test has been given us in the well-known maxim, “You can have anything in this world for money.”[15] If a thing is of this world you can have it for money; if you cannot have it for money, it does not belong to this world. That is what makes the whole thing manageable — money is pure number. By converting all values to numbers, everything can be fed into the computer and handled with ease and efficiency. “How much?” becomes the only question we need to ask. The manager “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing,” because for him the value is the price. Look around you here [at the BYU graduation ceremony]. Do you see anything that cannot be had for money? Is there anything here you couldn’t have if you were rich enough? Well, for one thing you may think you detect intelligence, integrity, sobriety, zeal, character, and other such noble qualities. Don’t the caps and gowns prove that? But hold on! I have always been taught that those are the very things that managers are looking for—they bring top prices in the marketplace. Does their value in this world mean, then, that they have no value in the other world? It means exactly that. Such things have no price and command no salary in Zion; you cannot bargain with them because they are as common as the once-pure air around us; they are not negotiable in the kingdom because there everybody possesses all of them in full measure, and it would make as much sense to demand pay for having bones or skin as it would to collect a bonus for honesty or sobriety. It is only in our world that they are valued for their scarcity. “Thy money perish with thee,” said Peter to a gowned quack [Simon Magus], who sought to include “the gift of God” in a business transaction.[16] Nibley saw Moroni’s closing warning in the Book of Mormon as especially applicable in our day: “Deny not the gifts of God.”[17] To Nibley: “Everything you have is a gift— everything. You have earned nothing.”[18] But, whether one is speaking temporally or spiritually, people don’t seem to want gifts. We deny the gifts because we don’t want them— at least not as gifts:[19] [We] want to say, “This is mine because I earned it.” … “But surely God expects us to work!” Of course he does, but we keep thinking of one kind of work, and he wants us to think of another. “Work we must,” explained Nibley, “but the lunch is free”:[20] We have been permitted to come here [to earth] to go to school, to acquire certain knowledge and take a number of tests to prepare us for greater things hereafter. This whole life, in fact, is “a state of probation” (2 Nephi 2:21). While we are at school our generous patron has provided us with all the necessities of living that we will need to carry us through. Imagine, then, that at the end of the first school year your kind benefactor pays the school a visit. He meets you and asks how you are doing. “Oh,” you say, “I am doing very well, thanks to your bounty.” Are you studying a lot?” “Yes, I am making good progress.” “What subjects are you studying?” “Oh, I am studying courses in how to get more lunch.” “You study that? All the time?” “Yes. I thought of studying some other subjects. Indeed I would love to study them — some of them are so fascinating! — but after all it’s the bread-and-butter courses that count. This is the real world, you know. There is no free lunch.” But, my dear boy, I’m providing you with that right now.” Yes, for the time being, and I am grateful — but my purpose in life is to get more and better lunches; I want to go right to the top — the executive suite, the Marriott lunch.” “But that is not the work I wanted you to do here,” says the patron. But if we leave off our constant preoccupation with acquiring and enjoying more and better lunches, what should we do instead? The basic answer should be obvious, but Nibley’s full response to this question is enlightening. This is something that readers would do well to explore on their own.[21] “On the last night of a play the whole cast and stage crew stay in theater until the small or not-so-small hours of the morning striking the old set.”[22]“O Babylon, O Babylon, We Bid Thee Farewell”[23] In Hugh Nibley Observed, Don Norton related that when he finished editing the foreword to Nibley’s volume, Approaching Zion, “one of his most popular, albeit controversial, volumes” — and, it should be added, one that almost didn’t see the light of day — he phoned Hugh to ask him about the title for the volume:[24] He muttered a few possibilities, then concluded., “Well, it ought to be titled Zion, but we’re not there as Saints yet. So let’s title it Approaching Zion.” Here was a battle where Nibley was willing to take sides. Because he recognized that nothing in this life really belonged to him, the law of consecration became an easy yoke. He was all in for Zion. And there was no question in his mind about where on the playing field his efforts — and our own — would bear the best fruit:[25] On the last night of a play the whole cast and stage crew stay in theater until the small or not-so-small hours of the morning striking the old set. If there is to be a new opening soon, as the economy of the theater requires, it is important that the new set should be in place and ready for the opening night; all the while the old set was finishing its usefulness and then being taken down, the new set was rising in splendor to be ready for the drama that would immediately follow. So it is with this world. It is not our business to tear down the old set — the agencies that do that are already hard at work and very efficient — the set is coming down all around us with spectacular effect. Our business is to see to it that the new set is well on the way for what is to come —and that means a different kind of politics, beyond the scope of the tragedy that is now playing its closing night. We are preparing for the establishment of Zion. *** We hope you will enjoy the video interview of Jeff Bradshaw embedded here, which you can view in either long or short form. Jeff, one of the editors of Hugh Nibley Observed recounts how the idea for the book germinated, and discusses why Hugh Nibley’s example as a scholar and a disciple is more relevant than ever before. In addition, a short video entitled ““What Five Things Did Hugh Nibley Teach Us About the Temple?” is embedded below, along with a more complete podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. The video introduces his lifelong scholarship on the temple — both as a house of learning and an example of selfless service. The law of consecration taught in the temple represented the pinnacle of Nibley’s personal strivings to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Insight – “What Five Things Did Hugh Nibley Teach Us About the Temple?” (PDF) Insight – “What Five Things Did Hugh Nibley Teach Us About the Temple?” (audio) Insight – “What Five Things Did Hugh Nibley Teach Us About the Temple?” (video) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (complete) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (short) References Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Campora, Olga Kovárová. Saint Behind Enemy Lines. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1997. Hymns of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1985. Nibley, Hugh. 1985. “The faith of an observer: Conversations with Hugh Nibley.” In Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, edited by Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 17, 148–76. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2008. http://www.bhporter.com/Hugh%20Nibley/The%20Faith%20of%20an%20Observer%20Conversations%20with%20hugh%20Nibley.pdf. Nibley, Hugh W. “But what kind of work?” In Approaching Zion, edited by Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9, 252-89. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989. Nibley, Hugh W., and Alex Nibley. Sergeant Nibley PhD: Memories of an Unlikely Screaming Eagle. Salt Lake City, UT: Shadow Mountain, 2006. Nibley, Hugh W. “Beyond politics.” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon/Mormon Studies Review 23, no. 1 (2011): 133-51. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1841&context=msr. (accessed September 20, 2020). ———. “Where is the battle? (from unpublished notes by Michael B. James).” n.d. ———. 1979. “Gifts.” In Approaching Zion, edited by D.E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9, 85-117. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989. ———. 1982. “Work we must, but the lunch is free.” In Approaching Zion, edited by Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9, 202-51. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989. ———. 1983. “Leaders to managers: The fatal shift.” In Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, edited by Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 13, 491-508. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1994. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jxjZXAd300. (accessed January 16, 2020). ———. 1984. “We will still weep for Zion.” In Approaching Zion, edited by Don E. Norton. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 9, 341-77. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1989. Petersen, Boyd Jay. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2002.   Notes [1] H. W. Nibley, Weep. [2] Courtesy of Marguerite Goldschmidt. Published in H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 164. [3] Exodus 1:8. [4] H. W. Nibley et al., Sergeant Nibley, p. 39. [5] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 39. [6] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 163. Some small edits were made for consistency with the original film transcript. [7] H. W. Nibley et al., Sergeant Nibley, p. 47. [8] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 165. Bracketed material is from B. J. Petersen, Nibley, p. 213. [9] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 165. [10] Published in Hymns (1985), Hymns (1985). [11] H. W. Nibley, Where is the battle? (from unpublished notes by Michael B. James); H. W. Nibley, Gifts, pp. 113–114. In her narrative describing her struggle in overcoming previous attitudes as she became a member of the Church in Communist Czechoslovakia, Olga Kovárová Campora wrote (O. K. Campora, Saint, p. 56): I found that I was against anything that smelled of Communist ideology, but I also suddenly saw that my own life was focused only on fighting against the wall of the current ideology I lived in, and I had not found my own proactive direction. I realized I had forgotten about my private, personal well-being while fighting. I hadn’t made any time and effort except to fight against the dragon. Later I realized that one of Satan’s powerful tools is to surround a person with something so obviously negative that the person spends all of his or her energy only on nonsensical fighting, instead of turning their backs to it and trying find their own pace and direction. How much time did I waste only on pointing to the wrong side of the world, instead. of hiking towards a better future? Somehow this big beast of Communism had become the focus of my personal life, as it had for many of my fellowmen, and meanwhile I experienced a complete emptiness as I considered my human soul and its place in the world and in the universe. I didn’t know who I was, where I came from, or what the purpose of my life was. [12] Published in BYU Today, November 1987, p. 8. Republished in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed , p. 754. The article was published in full in H. W. Nibley, Work. [13] H. W. Nibley, Leaders, pp. 495–498. [14] Ibid., pp. 503–504. [15] The Testament of Job affirms the antiquity of the use of variations of this proverb by Satan and his allies: “Pay the price and take what you like” (R. P. Spittler, Testament of Job, 23:3, p. 848). [16] See Acts 8:9-24. [17] Moroni 10:8. [18] H. W. Nibley, Gifts, p. 91. [19] Ibid., pp. 90, 91, 101–102. [20] H. W. Nibley, Work, p. 211. [21] See, e.g., H. W. Nibley, But What Kind. [22] https://dramaquarterly.com/tell-me-more/. [23] Hymns (1985), Hymns (1985) , “Ye Elders of Israel,” no. 319. [24] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 706. [25] H. W. Nibley, Beyond Politics (2011), p. 151.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post “We Will Still Weep for Zion”:[1] War and Wealth appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 6 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the sixth of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) Besides those who actively oppose the idea that that a loving, personal God exists in heaven, there have also always been others to whom questions of this sort never even occur. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, quoting Walter Bagehot, described such “disbelievers[, who] do not necessarily deny the great truths but are simply too preoccupied with other concerns”:[1] They do not deny them, but they live apart from them; they do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are stated. They do not question the existence of Kamchatka,[2] but they have no call to busy themselves with Kamchatka; they abstain from peculiar tenets. … [Such] persons … do not, as it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel; [they] have, so to say, no ear for much of religion, [and] are [thus] in some sort out of its reach.[3] Is there a remedy? If you could extend before men the awful vision of everlasting perdition; if they could see it as they see the things of earth, — as they see Fleet Street and St. Paul’s; if you could show men likewise the inciting vision of an everlasting heaven … with undeniable certainty and invincible distinctness, — who could say that they would have a thought for any other motive?[4] In a letter to his friend Paul Springer, quoted in Boyd Petersen’s marvelous biography, Hugh Nibley said the same thing more succinctly:[5] One peep at the other side and this [earthly] show looks too cheap for anything. Hugh in 1933. “I was terribly bothered by about this afterlife business.” Nibley could speak on this subject with the kind of authority that comes from firsthand experience:[6] [I always had a testimony of the gospel] except for one short period — when the bottom of the world fell out. That was desperate. … I was terribly bothered about this afterlife business and that sort of thing. I had no evidence for that whatever. And I remember I went up to Mt. Wilson[7] at that time. I walked around in the snow and brooded about it and I came back. We had a meeting at the old Hollywood Ward. Matthew Cowley’s father[, Matthias F. Cowley,] was the speaker that night. So, I went up to meet Brother Cowley, and as soon as he took my hand, he says, “Come with me, I want to give you a blessing.” The blessing was that the Lord would give me an answer immediately to the thing that had been puzzling my mind. Within the week I had an appendicitis attack and so we went to the old Seventh Day Adventist Hospital out in Loma Linda and had the appendix taken out. According to Phyllis, Hugh swallowed his tongue during the operation and actually was at one time technically dead” until they brought him back with a resuscitator. “But during that period, he had one of these ‘life after death’ experiences very much like the ones that Dr. Moody describes.”[8] Hugh related the experience as follows:[9] Then all of a sudden down this thing like a tube, you know, you get sucked down this thing and you come out. [I thought,] Oh, boy, I know everything, and everything is there, and this is what I wanted to know! Three cheers, and all this sort of thing. … All I wanted was to know whether there was anything on the other side, and when I came out there, I didn’t meet anything or anybody else, but I looked around. and not only was in all possession of my faculties, but they were tremendous. I was light as a feather and ready to go, you see. Above all I was interested in problems. I’d missed out a lot of math and stuff like that. Now in five minutes I would be able make up for that. Remember, as Joseph Smith said, “If you could look for five minutes into yonder heavens,” you see, you can forget about all the rest you ever bothered about.[10] A successful businessman learns he has about three weeks to live.[11]Trying to help those who have little ear for spiritual things relate to the profound impact of such an experience on his own life, Nibley provided the following parable:[12] Imagine… a successful businessman who, responding to some slight but persistent physical discomfort… pays a visit to [the] doctor. Since the man has always considered himself a fairly healthy specimen, it is with an unquiet mind that he descends the steps of the clinic … [knowing] that he has about three weeks to live. In the days that follow, this man’s thinking undergoes a … quick and brutal reorientation. … Things that once filled him with awe seem strangely trivial, and things which a few days before did not even exist for him now fill his consciousness. For the first time he discovers the … beauty of the world of nature. … The perfection of children comes to him like a sudden revelation, and he is appalled by the monstrous perversion that would … destroy their sensibilities. … Everywhere he looks he gets the feeling that all is passing away — … he sees all life and stuff about him involved in a huge ceaseless combustion, a literal and apparent process of oxidation which is turning some things slowly, some rapidly, but all things surely to ashes …. ‘What has happened to our solid citizen?’ his friends ask perplexed. He has chosen to keep his disease a secret, … [but] he cannot conceal his change of heart. As far as his old associates can see, the poor man has left the world of reality. … Now the question arises, has this man been jerked out of reality or into it? Has he cut himself off from the real world or has cruel necessity forced him to look in the face what he was running away from before? Is he in a dream now or has he just awakened from one? Has he become an irresponsible child, or has he suddenly grown up? … Some will answer one way, some another. But if you want to arouse him to wrathful sermons, just try telling the man that it makes no difference which of these worlds one lives in. Ann M. Madsen describes another important result of Nibley’s near-death experience, namely his preoccupation with “progressive repentance, forevermore, and a progressive revelation of our own ignorance.”[13] Said Nibley: [14] [Absolute knowledge of the afterlife] gives me a great relief, so that’s why I don’t take this very seriously down here. We’re just sort of dabbling around, playing around, being tested for our moral qualities, and above all the two things we can be good at, and no two other things can we do: We can forgive, and we can repent. It’s the gospel of repentance. We’re told that the angels envy men their ability both to forgive and to repent because they can’t do either, you see. But nobody’s very clever, nobody’s very brave, nobody’s very strong, nobody’s very wise. We’re all pretty stupid, you see. Nobody’s very anything. We’re not tested on those things, but in the things the angels envy us for — we can forgive, and we can repent. So, three cheers, let’s start repenting as of now. Son Alex and granddaughter Isabella with Hugh, 2003. Hugh Nibley’s preoccupation with continual repentance stayed with him to the end of his life. Particularly difficult for him, because of his strict Victorian upbringing, was his difficulty in freely expressing his love to family and friends. In Hugh Nibley Observed, Louis Midgley relates the following experience:[15] Phyllis called me and urged me to visit her husband. I did. And we talked. Hugh was in a hospital bed. He could hardly speak. … Soon, two Relief Society sisters knocked on the door. They had brought him dinner. They rushed over and hugged him and kissed him. And he just wept. When they left, Phyllis asked me, “Did you notice that?” I said, “Yes, I did.” “Have you ever seen my husband show emotion?” I answered, “No, never.” Phyllis said that “he couldn’t” show emotion. But when he was reduced to lying there, hardly able to talk, he would say to her, “Phyllis, I have been kept after school by the Lord so I could learn a lesson that I needed to learn before I pass away.” Hugh’s daughter Christina relates how he increasingly resembled the repentant businessman who learned he only had a short time to live:[16] In the final two years of his life, as he became physically incapacitated and forced to remain in bed, my dad became the very definition of sweetness. He never voiced a complaint about his pain and confinement. And during his most lucid moments, he seemed in constant awe of the sheer wonderfulness of all the people around him. He’d always been amazed at the beauty of nature and the fascination of learning. But now for two years, he couldn’t go outside, and he couldn’t accumulate footnotes. His compulsively active attention was forced to refocus, and it did so. His awe was greater than I’d ever seen it. Particularly toward Mom, his caretaker and wife, whom he told countless times during those months, “You are just so beautiful.” Son Alex said the following at Nibley’s funeral service especially to those who knew his father only as a great intellectual:[17] His ego — that vanity he fought so long — finally died when frailty left him completely dependent on others for every function of life. And what was left? Pure love. I saw him on my birthday in January. Again, there was a struggle for words, and finally he said, “To lack affection is to lack everything.” How’s that for a quote from your great intellectual? Dad resented sentimentality not because it contained too much emotion, but because it fell short of the depth of passion that he felt. So today I celebrate the life of the most passionate man I’ve ever known. Hugh’s passion and his faith were grounded in his absolute knowledge of the reality of the life to come. Throughout his life, he continued to have “a private arrangement with the other side which he thoroughly enjoyed.”[18] At the funeral service of his young grandson-in-law Joel Erik Myres, he asked:[19] Is this all there is? Here I am free to speak. … My reasoning is not perfect, but I can support it with a number of personal experiences that leave me in absolutely no doubt at all that Joel is engaged in a higher work. I expect to have this assertion confirmed in my own case before very long. And, just as Nibley anticipated, his assertion about the continuing and increased productivity of his own afterlife has now been wholly confirmed. *** We hope you will enjoy the video interview of Kirk Magleby embedded here, which you can view in either long or short form. Kirk, involved for many years with FARMS and a principal actor in Book of Mormon Central since its inception recounts how Hugh Nibley was a model to him and his friends from his formative years to the present day. In addition, a short video entitled ““How Did Hugh Nibley Become a Spiritual Mentor to an Atheist Basketball Star from Croatia?” is embedded below, along with a more complete podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. The video tells the inspiring and entertaining story of how a famous basketball player, diplomat, and national hero from the former Yugoslavia became a Latter-day Saint, with the help of Hugh Nibley and his daughter Christina. Insight – “How Did Hugh Nibley Become a Spiritual Mentor to an Atheist Basketball Star from Croatia?” (PDF) Insight – “How Did Hugh Nibley Become a Spiritual Mentor to an Atheist Basketball Star from Croatia?” (audio) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Hugh-Nibley-Basketball-player-insight.mp3 Insight – “How Did Hugh Nibley Become a Spiritual Mentor to an Atheist Basketball Star from Croatia?” (video) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Kirk Magleby (complete) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Kirk Magleby (short) References Bagehot, Walter. The Works of Walter Bagehot (with Memoirs by R. H. Hutton). 5 vols, ed. Forrest Morgan. Hartford, CT: The Travelers Insurance Company, 1889. Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Maxwell, Neal A. We Will Prove Them Herewith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1982. Moody, Raymond A. Life After Life. Covington, GA: Mockingbird Books, 1975. Nibley, Hugh. 1985. “The faith of an observer: Conversations with Hugh Nibley.” In Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, edited by Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 17, 148–76. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2008. http://www.bhporter.com/Hugh%20Nibley/The%20Faith%20of%20an%20Observer%20Conversations%20with%20hugh%20Nibley.pdf. ———. 2001. “Graveside service address for Joel Erik Myres.” In Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, edited by Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 17, 263–68. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2008. Nibley, Hugh W. 1955. “The way of the Church.” In Mormonism and Early Christianity, edited by Todd M. Compton and Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 4, 209-322. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1987. Petersen, Boyd Jay. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2002. Smith, Joseph, Jr., Andrew F. Ehat, and Lyndon W. Cook. The Words of Joseph Smith: The Contemporary Accounts of the Nauvoo Discourses of the Prophet Joseph, 1980. https://rsc.byu.edu/book/words-joseph-smith. (accessed August 21, 2020). Smith, Joseph, Jr., Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M. Rogers. Journals: May 1843-June 1844. The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals 3, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Press, 2015. Smith, Joseph, Jr. 1938. Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1969. Endnotes [1] N. A. Maxwell, Prove, pp. 88–89. [2] A remote peninsula in the far east of Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamchatka_Peninsula (accessed May 3, 2021). [3] W. Bagehot, Bagehot, 1:42, https://archive.org/details/cu31924024730941/ (accessed May 3, 2021). [4] Ibid., 2:302, https://archive.org/details/worksofwalterbag02bageiala/ (accessed May 3, 2021). [5] Letter to Paul Springer, 2 February 1964, quoted in B. J. Petersen, Nibley, p. 131. [6] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 161. See Dan Peterson’s account of this event in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, pp. 164–166. [7] Mount Wilson is above Pasadena, California. Hugh was living in Glendale, California at the time. [8] Phyllis Nibley in H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 161. According to son Tom, Phyllis “had a similar experience during a difficult pregnancy” (J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 563). On “Life after Life” experiences generally, see R. A. Moody, Life After Life. Tom recalls that “examining and explaining what this sort of thing was about and telling us about his own experience” became the subject of two family home evenings (J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 564). [9] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, pp. 161–162. [10] Cf. Joseph Smith: “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that was ever written on the subject” (J. Smith, Jr., Teachings, 9 October 1843, p. 324. Cf. J. Smith, Jr. et al., Journals, 1843-1844, p. 109; J. Smith, Jr. et al., Words, p. 254). In the report in the Times and Seasons (4, 15 September 1843, pp. 331–332) the Prophet also writes: “Knowledge of [our condition and true relation to God] can only be obtained by experience in these things, through the ordinances of God set forth for that purpose … and in answer to prayer” (ibid., p. 253. Regarding the requisite ordinances, see ibid., pp. 53–54 n. 19). [11] https://www.rd.com/list/medical-cartoons/ (accessed May 3, 2021). [12] H. W. Nibley, Way, pp. 302–305. [13] Ann M. Madsen, in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 201. [14] H. Nibley, Faith of an Observer, p. 162. [15] Louis Midgley in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, pp. 625–626. [16] Christina Nibley Mincek in ibid., p. 573. [17] Alex Nibley in ibid., p. 559. [18] Recollection of Tom Nibley of a statement of his father made on multiple occasions, ibid., p. 568. [19] H. Nibley, Graveside Service, p. 268.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post “One Peep at the Other Side”: What Did Hugh Nibley’s Near-Death Experience Teach Him about the Purpose of Life? appeared first on FAIR.

This week, I briefly talk about the upcoming podcast episodes on the Witnesses film before talking to Monica Moore Smith and Bryce Clark about their movie Mission Stories. Both Mission Stories and Witnesses are fantastic movies to watch with your family. In this interview, we discuss themes of the movie, such as grace and the atonement of Jesus Christ, as well as what it is like to go on a mission. Hanna Seariac is a MA student in Greek and Latin at Brigham Young University. She works as a research assistant on a biblical commentary and as a research assistant on early Latter-day Saint history. Her interests thematically center around sacrifice, magic, and priesthood as it pertains to ancient Judaism, early Christianity, ancient Egyptian religion, and early Restoration history. The post FAIR Voice Podcast #32: Mission Stories appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 4 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the fourth of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) In line with Nibley’s description of the Pearl of Great Price, we borrow a chapter title from Boyd Jay Petersen’s wonderful biography on Hugh Nibley as the theme of this week’s Insight: “The Book That Answers All the Questions.”[1] Harold Bloom, 1930-2019 The eminent Yale professor and Jewish literary scholar Harold Bloom, described in 2017 by Oxford Bibliographies as “probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world,”[2] called the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham two of the “more surprising” and “neglected” works of Latter-day Saint scripture.[3] With the great spate of publications over the decades since fragments of Egyptian papyri were rediscovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we have begun to see a remedy for the previous neglect of the Book of Abraham. Now, gratefully, because of wider availability of the original manuscripts and new detailed studies of their contents, the Book of Moses is also beginning to receive its due. In fact, this coming Friday and Saturday, April 23–24, 2021, the Interpreter Foundation, BYU Ancient Scripture, Book of Mormon Central, and FAIR will host the second of two groundbreaking conferences on the theme of “Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses” ( https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2021-book-of-moses-conference/ ). What did Professor Bloom find so “surprising” in the Book of Moses? He said he was intrigued by the fact that many of its themes are “strikingly akin to ancient suggestions.” While expressing “no judgment, one way or the other, upon the authenticity” of Latter-day Saint scripture, he found “enormous validity” in the way these writings “recapture … crucial elements in the archaic Jewish religion … that had ceased to be available either to normative Judaism or to Christianity, and that survived only in esoteric traditions unlikely to have touched [Joseph] Smith directly.”[4] In other words, Professor Bloom found it a great wonder that Joseph Smith could have come up with, on his own, a modern book that resembles so closely ancient Jewish and Christian teachings. Not surprisingly, Gary Gillum noted that three heavily annotated copies of a talk by Harold Bloom on Joseph Smith were found among Nibley’s papers after his passing.[5] “Hugh looks over a reproduction of Facsimile 1 from the Joseph Smith Papyri, ca. 1967, his desk covered by stacks of his trademark notecards.”[6]Like Professor Bloom, Hugh Nibley had glowing assessment of the Pearl of Great Price. Comparing the different volumes of scripture in the Latter-day Saint canon, he wrote:[7] The Book of Mormon and the Old Testament are tribal histories — we still identify ourselves with the tribes of Israel. The New Testament and the Doctrine and Covenants are theological and doctrinal teachings, everlasting and timeless. But the Pearl of Great Price brings together the contemporary accounts of the seven main dispensations of the world since Adam. Coming last, it sums up the entire history of mankind, filling in many of the gaps in our knowledge that have remained to this day. The records of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Joseph Smith were given to the Saints as a bonus for their acceptance of the Book of Mormon and are still kept in reserve; we may anticipate the pleasure of more light to come. Because the subject of this week’s Insight essay, video, and podcast is the Book of Moses, we will focus below on Nibley’s involvement with the Book of Abraham. To undertake serious study of the Book of Abraham, Nibley realized he would have to learn Egyptian. In Hugh Nibley Observed he relates how he got started with the language during a sabbatical at Berkeley:[8] Along with teaching I sweated for a year at Egyptian and Coptic with a very able and eager young professor.[9] The Coptic would be useful, but Egyptian? At my age? As soon as I got back to Provo I found out. … Then in 1966 I studied more Egyptian in Chicago, thanks to the kind indulgence of Professors Baer and Wilson, but still wondered if it was worth all the fuss. When lo, in the following year came some of the original Joseph Smith Papyri into the hands of the Church; our own people saw in them only a useful public relations gimmick, but for the opposition they offered the perfect means of demolishing Smith once and for all. In BYU professor Michael D. Rhodes’ chapter in Hugh Nibley Observed, he says more about the finding of the papyri and its significance in Nibley’s work for years to come:[10] On November 27, 1967, the Metropolitan Museum of Art formally gave the Joseph Smith Papyri fragments to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church then published photos of the papyri in the February 1968 Improvement Era. This was a remarkable feat, since at that time, it took two full months to publish talks from general conference, which we now can get online the next day. Nibley had been given access to the papyri, and he began an in-depth study of them. Nibley’s work on the Joseph Smith Papyri and the Book of Abraham covered more than forty years and resulted in four books and numerous articles and talks. While BYU professor John Gee was well aware that Nibley’s approach to Egyptology had both strengths and weaknesses, he admired Nibley’s willingness to dive into such daunting research headlong. Gee recalled Nibley’s list of four options available to Latter-day Saint scholars in the face of the opportunities and challenges afforded by the newly discovered papyri:[11] We can ignore them. … We can run away from them. … We can agree with the world. … Finally, we can meet the opposition on their own grounds. According to Gee, “Nibley followed the last of the options that he laid out. Even more than half a century later, Nibley’s observations are still on target and as relevant as ever.”[12] Nibley was determined to finish a final book relating to the Book of Abraham, entitled One Eternal Round, and worked diligently on it for more than fifteen years. However, the work was uncompleted when Nibley suffered his final illness at age 94. Michael Rhodes recounts the dilemma that faced a small group of Nibley’s friends as they met in his home to decide what to do about the manuscript. Nibley himself was present in a hospital bed, asleep or unconscious:[13] A few months before, a group of us had gone to the upper story of his home to collect all of Hugh’s materials relating to this book that were scattered in several different rooms. This comprised over thirty boxes of papers, notes, and pictures, as well as some 450 computer files that contained sometimes as many as twenty different versions of a given chapter. This was a huge amount of material. How could we take all this and make a book out of it? … It became clear that the only practical way to do this would be for one person to simply immerse himself in this massive collection of material and condense and distill it into publishable form. This would require much more than simple editing, and the person would have to be a coauthor because there were many parts that were still incomplete. As we all looked uncomfortably at each other, no one at that point was willing to commit to doing it. So we adjourned without making a final decision. The rest of that day, I almost felt what Alma describes as “suffering the pains of a damned soul” (Alma 35:16). I kept going over and over in my mind, thinking, “Mike, you’ve got to do this for Hugh.” That night, I lay awake, still struggling with the magnitude of the task and whether I could even accomplish it. Finally, sometime in the middle of the night, a sense of calm came over me, and I realized this was something I had to do and could do. I would finish this book for Hugh. I owed him so much because of all the things he had done for me over the years. So, the next morning I called Shirley Ricks to tell her I’d be willing to finish the book. … I was doing a couple of other things in my office … when the phone rang. It was Shirley saying that Hugh had passed away earlier that morning. I firmly believe that once I had made that decision, Hugh somehow knew it and felt he could then leave this life assured that his book would be finished. Before closing, I would like to focus on a statement by Gary Gillum: “Infinitely more important than Nibley’s scholarship, talents, and gifts was the man himself.”[14] There are many reasons why this statement is true, but an incident related by Sterling J. Albrecht is revealing about Nibley’s personal priorities:[15] Hugh and I were invited to [Salt Lake City] to pick up the [newly rediscovered Joseph Smith] Papyri. We met with Elder Tanner [counselor to President David O. McKay] in his office. He told us that the First Presidency was sending the Papyri to BYU so that Hugh could study and interpret it. He also said that the Papyri was very valuable and if anything happened … [while we were driving] that Hugh and I should just keep going. As we were driving to Provo, we saw two ladies at the side of the road with the hood of their car up. I thought that we should stop but also remembered Elder Tanner’s admonition that we had very valuable cargo, so I was going to drive on by. Hugh said, “Stop the car, they need help!” We stopped, locked the car and walked over to see if we could help the women. They said that the car would start but they couldn’t get the hood down so that they could drive it. Hugh got up on the top of the car, hung his feet down over the windshield, and then pushed on the hood with both of his feet. He forced the hood down and the ladies were able to drive it. Such stories reveal the real Hugh Nibley. *** We hope you will enjoy the video interview of Stephen T. Whitlock embedded here, which you can view in either long or short form. Steve shares his experiences as an editor for Hugh Nibley Observed as well as describing Nibley’s impact on his personal life. In addition, this week’s Insight media outlines one of Hugh Nibley’s discoveries about the Book of Moses. A short video entitled “What Did Enoch Scholar Matthew Black Say To Hugh Nibley about the Book of Moses Enoch Account?” is embedded below, along with a longer podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. Finally, don’t forget to check out the program for the April 23–24 conference on “Tracing Ancient Threads in the Book of Moses” ( https://interpreterfoundation.org/conferences/2021-book-of-moses-conference/ ). Insight – “What Did Enoch Scholar Matthew Black Say To Hugh Nibley About the Book of Moses Enoch Account?” (PDF) Insight – “What Did Enoch Scholar Matthew Black Say To Hugh Nibley About the Book of Moses Enoch Account?” (audio) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Hugh-Nibley-Book-of-Moses.mp3 Insight video: What Did Enoch Scholar Matthew Black Say To Hugh Nibley about the Book of Moses Enoch Account? A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Stephen T. Whitlock (complete) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Stephen T. Whitlock (short) References Bloom, Harold. The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation. New York City, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1992. ———. Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine. New York City, NY: Riverhead Books (Penguin Group), 2005. Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Nibley, Hugh W., and Michael D. Rhodes. One Eternal Round. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 19. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2010. Petersen, Boyd Jay. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2002. Notes [1] B. J. Petersen, Nibley, p. 313. [2] https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0005.xml (accessed April 18, 2021). [3] H. Bloom, Names Divine, p. 25. Hugh Nibley concurs with this assessment, noting that the Pearl of Great Price “has received less attention than the other writings and has been studied only superficially” (H. W. Nibley et al., One Eternal Round, p. 18). [4] H. Bloom, American Religion, pp. 98, 99, 101. [5] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 757. [6] Ibid., p. 48. [7] H. W. Nibley et al., One Eternal Round, pp. 18-19. See also Nibley’s discussion of the seven “axial dispensations” in ibid., pp. 57-60. [8] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, pp. 48–49. [9] Referring to Klaus Baer, who later was recruited to the prestigious Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, where Nibley later went to study under him a second time. “Although invited to stay on  [as a professor] at Berkeley, [Nibley] decides to return to BYU. At his request, he teaches only scripture-related classes” (B. J. Petersen, Nibley, p. 416). [10] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 375. [11] Ibid., p. 507. [12] Ibid., p. 508. [13] Ibid., pp. 365–367. [14] Ibid., p. 736. [15] Ibid., pp. 417–418.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post “The Book That Answers All the Questions”: Hugh Nibley and the Pearl of Great Price appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 3 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the third of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) Hugh Nibley was a master at taking ancient history and applying its lessons to our day. One of the best examples of this is within his writings on revelation, reason, and rhetoric — or to use Greek equivalents: mantic, sophic, and sophistic views about how we come to know things.[1] Nibley’s perspectives are wonderfully summarized and discussed within BYU professor Eric Huntsman’s chapter of Hugh Nibley Observed.[2] BYU Professor Eric Huntsman, Speaking in 2010 First, a little background on the subject: Mantic. The Greek word mantis means “prophet” — as a memory prompt, think of the praying mantis insect — literally a praying “prophet.” “The mantic worldview holds that there is absolute, unchanging truth, but we can’t arrive at it on our own. It needs to be revealed to us. Nibley proposes that the Greeks were, originally, a mantic society that believed in revealed truth.”[3] Though moderns often make light of ancient religions and their many gods, Nibley hesitated to do so, asserting that “it is high time we realized there must have been a solid body of fact behind the strange unwillingness of Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians to give up their Mantic addictions.”[4] What tied these diverse believers together was their hope or assurance of the reality of something beyond the sad world around them. Nibley believed that without an understanding of “the other world, or better, other worlds, … any true understanding of this life is out of the question.”[5] Sophic. “The prophets were followed, and largely replaced, by the Sophoi or ‘wise men.’ The Greek word for ‘wisdom’ is Sophia, and the Sophoi … were men who did not throw away prophets and revelation. They were simply so naturally or intuitively brilliant that they came upon wisdom on their own. … This embrace of truth, as discovered by mortals through their own intelligence, Nibley termed ‘the sophic worldview.’”[6] “The problem was in the next intellectual phase, which began with the rise of sophistry. Rather than having truth revealed to them or naturally coming to wisdom on their own, the Sophist freely created ‘truth.’ Their name come from sophistēs, which literally means ‘one who created or made up wisdom,’ or wisdom so-called.”[7] The Greek term is related to the modern conception of a “sophisticate.” Through the use of “rhetoric, the art of speaking persuasively,”[8] some of the sophistēs boasted that they could make false things look true. For example, Protagoras “could speak so persuasively that he could argue anything and make his listeners believe it.”[9] Nibley found parallels between the ancient and modern abuses of rhetoric in many places. For instance, Huntsman writes: “For our politicians to speak persuasively to us, they (a) lie to us, (b) tell us what we want to hear, or (c) talk in short sound bites, giving snippets that the evening news can easily report.”[10] But Nibley reserves his own most biting prose, in this case applying rhetoric in the service of truth rather than falsehood, to the worlds of business and advertising. In 1978, Nibley wrote a preface to an article he wrote entitled “Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else,”[11] We quote from this preface, published for the first time in Hugh Nibley Observed:[12] The disease our world is suffering from is not something peculiar to a uniquely scientific and permissive age, but the very same virus that has finished off all the other great societies of which we have record. The ancients called it Rhetoric. What it amounts to is the acceptance, for the sake of power and profits, of certain acknowledged standards of lying. … Rhetoric … creates an unreal world — that is its great power, like the power of those idols of wood and stone whose appeal was precisely that they could not see or hear, but ever remained perfectly compliant to the wishes and purposes of their owners. As with a jet engine, the efficiency of rhetoric steadily increases as its surrounding element approximates more and more to a perfect vacuum. As it destroys the real world around it, the power of Rhetoric becomes ever more invincible, moving inexorably towards total supremacy in a total vacuum. We have almost reached that condition today, for some of our greatest fortunes and mightiest corporations are built not on secret formulas for cola drinks or hamburger patties, but on the conversion of those trifles into symbols of youth, beauty, health, super-fun, family togetherness — the soft caress of a child, the flag unfurled — that is what the rascals are selling, and it is the ultimate triumph of pure Rhetoric in the modern world. The Nineteen Volumes of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley Authentic knowledge, obtained both through “study and faith,”[13] is the only vaccine for sophistry. And Nibley’s immunity was in large measure due to his ability to hold the two desirable but sometimes competing worldviews in tension as both “a Sophic and a Mantic man”[14] — though, as his daughter Zina rightly avers “there was more to the mantic than the sophic”[15] in him. As Don Norton’s sums it up at the end of contribution:[16] Nibley’s nineteen collected volumes contain a refreshing reminder of that there is to know about humans and their behavior, both good and bad, through their historical records. … [But] at the end of many of his lectures, he often offered very simple counsel to his audiences and readers: “Get a testimony. Find out form the Lord your calling in life. Confess your weaknesses before the Lord, and don’t forget to repent daily.” *** We hope you will enjoy the video interview of Shirley S. Ricks embedded here, which you can view in either long or short form. Keeping with the theme this week of what Nibley knew about revelation, reason, and rhetoric, Shirley shares her firsthand experience as an editor for many of the nineteen volumes of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, and as co-editor of Hugh Nibley Observed. In addition, this week’s Insight content outlines one of Hugh Nibley’s discoveries about the Atonement of Jesus Christ, as contained in the first of a four part series carried in the Church’s Ensign periodical in 1990. A short video entitled “Where Did the Idea That the Atonement is an “At-One-Ment” Come From?” is embedded below, along with a more complete podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. Insight – “Where Did the Idea That the Atonement is an ‘At-one-ment’ Come From?” (PDF) Insight – “Where Did the Idea That the Atonement is an “At-One-Ment” Come From?” (audio) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/210401-Hugh-Nibley-Atonement.mp3 Insight video: “Where Did the Idea That the Atonement is an ‘At-One-Ment’ Come From?” A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Shirley S. Ricks (complete) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Shirley S. Ricks (short) References Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Nibley, Hugh W. 1956. “Victoriosa Loquacitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else.” In The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10, 243-86. Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991. Reprint, Western Speech 20 (Spring 1956), 47-82. ———. 1963. “Paths that stray: Some notes on Sophic and Mantic.” In The Ancient State, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10, 380–482. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1991. ———. 1963. “Three shrines: Mantic, sophic, and sophistic.” In The Ancient State, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 10, 311–79. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1991.   Notes [1] See, e.g., J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed; H. W. Nibley, Paths That Stray. [2] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, pp. 283–289. [3] Ibid., p. 283. [4] H. W. Nibley, Three Shrines, p. 319. [5] Ibid., p. 316. [6] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, pp. 283–284. [7] Ibid., p. 284. [8] Ibid., p. 284. [9] Ibid., p. 285. [10] Ibid., p. 284. [11] H. W. Nibley, Victoriosa Loquacitas. [12] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 191. [13] Doctrine and Covenants 88:118; 109:7, 14. [14] H. W. Nibley, Three Shrines, p. 315. [15] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, p. 74. [16] Ibid., pp. 708–709.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post Hugh Nibley on Revelation, Reason, and Rhetoric appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 2 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the second of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). The series is in honor of the new, landmark book, Hugh Nibley Observed, available in softcover, hardback, digital, and audio editions. Each week our post is accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video formats. (See the links at the end of this post.) In an eloquently written chapter of Hugh Nibley Observed, Marilyn Arnold highlighted Nibley’s profound disappointment that most people don’t share his deep love for the Book of Mormon:[1] He alludes to it ironically as “the Book Nobody Wants,” allowing as how the world acts “as if the Book of Mormon were being forced on [it] against its will.” Then he adds an ironic comment that is pure Nibley: “Only the practiced skill and single-minded determination of the learned has to date enabled them to escape the toils of serious involvement with [the Book of Mormon].”[2] My well-worn copy of Benoit’s “Le Lac Salé” (The Salt Lake)[3] My well-worn copy of a 1965 edition of the French Book of Mormon. What did Nibley mean by “the Book Nobody Wants”? I got a taste of that as a young missionary in France when I learned how difficult it was to find readers for the Book of Mormon in one of the most highly educated and literate countries of Europe. Instead, some of them were eager to tell me fantastic tales like the one about the young girls who were duped by the missionaries into following them to Salt Lake City. There, according to the version I heard, they were locked up in one of the towers of the Salt Lake Temple until they were finally able to jump out of the tower into the Great Salt Lake and swam to safety.[4] In sharp contrast to the general indifference to the Book of Mormon I experienced on my first mission, I remember how the near monthly orders for hundreds of copies of the Book of Mormon made by my wife in the office of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa mission were constantly on backorder from Frankfurt. In Kinshasa, Kathleen and I couldn’t walk anywhere without someone noticing our missionary name tags and wanting to talk about Jesus or ask us for a Bible. I hadn’t anticipated such great interest in the Book of Mormon in the heart of Africa — after all, I had not thought this was “their” story in the same way it was the story of many indigenous groups in the Americas and the Pacific islands. But we soon found out we were mistaken: the stories of continual violence, wars, and conflicts, endemic corruption, government leaders on the take, Gadianton robbers and assassins, courageous Christians, life-changing visions from heaven, and the Gospel being preached to the poor and poor in heart were indeed their stories, too — and it struck them to the heart to read them. After having lived in the Congo, many of the Book of Mormon stories became daily reality — as they are becoming reality in too many parts of the world. I will never forget how glad we were, after a new shipment of copies of the Book of Mormon finally came in, to share one with a very humble (but characteristically biblically educated and literate) parking lot attendant in our compound who eagerly took it to read during his night shift. The next morning when we saw him, he burst out with an uncontainable enthusiasm, “I can’t believe how much I learned from Alma about what happens to people between death and resurrection!” Though this contrast did not diminish by one whit my great and eternal love for the many devoted French members and friends we cherish, it further increased my admiration for the spiritual inclination of the Congolese people. They immediately recognized there was a treasure of infinite worth hidden in the Book of Mormon, and they wanted to know more about what God had spoken. Marilyn Arnold writes: “The thing that welds Hugh Nibley to my mind and heart is our mutual love of the Book of Mormon.”[5]Which brings us back to Hugh Nibley, to whom the Book of Mormon was also a treasure of infinite worth. He often found himself tired of all the focus on the history of the Book of Mormon, the shape and weight of the plates, the admittedly miraculous method of its translation, the myriad details of its publication, and also, unfortunately, the efforts to impugn the character of its translator. What he wanted people to pay attention to was the contents of the book itself. We must not, as Elder Boyd K. Packer warned us, admire the box and while forgetting the pearl that it holds inside.[6] Fittingly, one of Nibley’s most well-known parables, with application to the Book of Mormon, teaches us the way, and the only way, one can reliably test whether a diamond is real:[7] A young man once long ago claimed he had found a large diamond in his field as he was ploughing. He put the stone on display to the public free of charge, and everyone took sides. A psychologist showed, by citing some famous case studies, that the young man was suffering from a well-known form of delusion. An historian showed that other men have also claimed to have found diamonds in fields and been deceived. A geologist proved that there were no diamonds in the area but only quartz: the young man had been fooled by a quartz. When asked to inspect the stone itself, the geologist declined with a weary, tolerant smile and a kindly shake of the head. An English professor showed that the young man in describing his stone used the very same language that others had used in describing uncut diamonds: he was, therefore, simply speaking the common language of his time. A sociologist showed that only three out of 177 florists’ assistants in four major cities believed the stone was genuine. A clergyman wrote a book to show that it was not the young man but someone else who had found the stone. Finally an indigent jeweler named Snite pointed out that since the stone was still available for examination the answer to the question of whether it was a diamond or not had absolutely nothing to do with who found it, or whether the finder was honest or sane, or who believed him, or whether he would know a diamond from a brick, or whether diamonds had ever been found in fields, or whether people had ever been fooled by quartz or glass, but was to be answered simply and solely by putting the stone to certain well-known tests for diamonds. Experts on diamonds were called in. Some of them declared it genuine. The others made nervous jokes about it and declared that they could not very well jeopardize their dignity and reputations by appearing to take the thing too seriously. To hide the bad impression thus made, someone came out with the theory that the stone was really a synthetic diamond, very skillfully made, but a fake just the same. The objection to this is that the production of a good synthetic diamond 120 years ago would have been an even more remarkable feat than the finding of a real one. As Nibley’s scholarship consistently demonstrated, both in its strengths and in its shortfalls, conducting real and comprehensive tests for the Book of Mormon as an authentic, ancient record is, generally speaking, a more rigorous and challenging process than testing hypotheses about whether its origin has a purely nineteenth-century explanation. To fully appreciate the Book of Mormon, we must come to understand the many rich details hidden in its inspiring stories, details that have been deliberately included to bless the lives of those with eyes to see and ears to hear.[8] Though often entertaining and inspiring, Nibley’s voluminous Book of Mormon writings are not always light and facile fare. But, as President Russell M. Nelson reminded us: “The Lord loves effort.”[9] Nibley recounts:[10] Years ago when I wrote the 1957 priesthood manual, An Approach to the Book of Mormon,[11] the committee turned down every chapter. But President [David O.] McKay overruled the committee on every chapter. He said that if it’s over the brethren’s heads, let them reach for it. He left every chapter just as I had it. The committee fumed at the mouth and protested, “We can’t have it!” President McKay turned right around and said, “We jolly well can have it! Let them work at it a little.” In his chapter from Hugh Nibley Observed, Richard L. Bushman notes that prior to Nibley’s telling of the Snite parable, “Nibley makes a remarkable statement”:[12] We have never been much interested in “proving” the Book of Mormon; for us, its divine provenance has always been an article of faith, and its historical aspects by far the least important thing about it.[13] Bushman asks: “What can he possibly mean when he says he has never been much interested in ‘proving’ the Book of Mormon? How can a man who dedicated his life to that endeavor say he is not much interested?” The answer is, of course, that Nibley’s testimony “arises in another realm, the realm of faith.”[14] Though Nibley rejoiced in the truths unearthed through scholarship and the deeper understanding of scripture doctrine and events such knowledge brings, his personal witness of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon, the most precious gift it delivered to his soul, came to him by means of divine revelation. *** We hope you will enjoy the video interviews of John W. “Jack” Welch embedded here, which you can view in either long or short form. Keeping with our Book of Mormon theme this week, Jack has been a firsthand participant in some of the most important Book of Mormon research. In addition, as the catalyst that led to the formation of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) in 1979, no one is in a better position than Jack to tell the stories of its beginning, and the important role of Hugh Nibley in the organization and its publications, including the nineteen-volume Collected Works of Hugh Nibley. In addition, this week’s Insight content is also focused on the Book of Mormon. A short video entitled “What Was Hugh Nibley Thinking About When He Landed His Jeep on the Beach on D-Day?” is embedded below, along with a more complete podcast and pdf transcript that are available for listening or download. Book of Mormon Insight – “What Was Hugh Nibley Thinking About When He Landed His Jeep on the Beach on D-Day?” (PDF) What Was Hugh Nibley Thinking About When He Landed His Jeep on the Beach on D-Day? (audio) https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/210408-Hugh-Nibley-Book-of-Mormon-D-Day.mp3 What Was Hugh Nibley Thinking About When He Landed His Jeep on the Beach on D-Day? A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Jack Welch (complete) A Conversation about Hugh Nibley with Jack Welch (short) References Benoit, Pierre. Le Lac Salé. Paris, France: Albin Michel, éditeur, 1921. Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Decoo, Wilfried. “The image of Mormonism in French literature: Part 1.” BYU Studies 14, no. 2 (1974): 1-15. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol14/iss2/4. (accessed April 3, 2021). ———. “The image of Mormonism in French literature: Part 2.” BYU Studies 16, no. 2 (1976): 265–76. ttps://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol16/iss2/5. (accessed April 3, 2021). Jones, Joy D. “An especially noble calling.” Ensign 50, April 2020. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2020/04/14jones?lang=eng. (accessed April 3, 2021). Lawrence, Gary C. 2011. She jumped from the Temple into the Great Salt Lake.  In Meridian Magazine. https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-8603/. (accessed April 3, 2021). Nibley, Hugh. 1976. “Nibliography.” In Eloquent Witness: Nibley on Himself, Others, and the Temple, edited by Stephen D. Ricks. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 17, 46-50. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 2008. Nibley, Hugh W. An Approach to the Book of Abraham: Course of Study for the Melchizedek Priesthood Quorums of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, UT: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1957. ———. 1952. Lehi in the Desert, The World of the Jaredites, There Were Jaredites. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 5. Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret Book, 1988. ———. 1967. Since Cumorah. 2nd ed. The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley 7. Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), 1988. Packer, Boyd K. “The cloven tongues of fire.” Ensign 30, May 2000, 7-9. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2000/04/the-cloven-tongues-of-fire?lang=eng. Endnotes [1] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 304. [2] H. W. Nibley, Since, 193. [3] P. Benoit, Le Lac Salé. Copy is No. 348 of an edition printed “sur papier de Hollande.” [4] I was greatly disappointed when I finally got my copy of Le Lac Salé, a plural marriage potboiler by a well-known French author, that this story was not included (for a plot summary and an excellent review of the 19th and 20th century attitudes and literature of the French about the Latter-day Saints [W. Decoo, Image, Part 1 and W. Decoo, Image, Part 2, especially the plot summary and analysis of Benoit’s book on pp. 271–273]). However I was interested to learn that Gary C. Lawrence had heard a similar story during his mission to Germany in 1961, where it was apparently depicted in pamphlet as a true fact rather than a fictional invention. After recounting a non-stop series of salacious episodes the book “finished up with the woman sobbing (as close as I can remember the words), ‘The final humiliation was when the Mormon priests pushed me out of the second story of the Salt Lake temple into the Great Salt Lake to be baptized.’” Lawrence added: “I didn’t know whether to laugh, to punch a hole in the wall, or to try to find the woman and recruit her for the Olympics” (G. C. Lawrence, She Jumped). [5] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 305. [6] B. K. Packer, Cloven. [7] H. W. Nibley, Lehi 1988, pp. 121–122. Also told in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 100–101, 301. [8] See, e.g., Matthew 13:16; Doctrine and Covenants 136:32. [9] Cited in J. D. Jones, Especially Noble Calling. [10] H. Nibley, Nibliography, 50. Discussed in J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed,161–162, 256, 350, 355, 437. [11] H. W. Nibley, Approach to Abraham (1957). [12] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 102. [13] H. W. Nibley, Lehi 1988, 114. [14] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 102.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post “The Book Nobody Wants”: Hugh Nibley and the Book of Mormon appeared first on FAIR.

Post 1 | Post 2 | Post 3 | Post 4 | Post 5 | Post 6 | Post 7 | Post 8 | Post 9 Post 1 of 9 by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw For more information on the book, visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ This is the first of nine weekly blog posts published in honor of the life and work of Hugh Nibley (1910–2005). Each week our post will be accompanied by interviews and insights in pdf, audio, and video form — some short and some longer. Today, April 1, is not only April Fool’s Day (an irony Hugh Nibley would appreciate), but also the eleventh anniversary since the appearance of the nineteenth and last volume of the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, entitled One Eternal Round. This book was Hugh’s master work, decades in the making. This series is our way of celebrating the availability of a new, landmark publication entitled “Hugh Nibley Observed.”[1] It is available today in softcover, digital, and audio versions, and, in May, a beautiful hardback edition. The book contains many never-before-told anecdotes and stories that weave together Nibley’s life and scholarship. We hope it will not only delight and inspire old friends already familiar with Nibley’s work but also many new friends who may have heard stories about the man but have never read anything by or about him. Our theme today revolves around the question: “Who was Hugh Nibley?” For links to this week’s text, audio, and video features, see below. Over a period of four years Nibley worked his way through the stacks of the nine floors of the UCLA library, book by book, stopping whenever something caught his eye.[2]Who was Hugh Nibley? For starters, Nibley was arguably the most brilliant Latter-day Saint scholar of the 20th century. Just ask a sampling of his non-Latter-day Saint colleagues: “Hugh Nibley is simply encyclopedic. Though I do not agree with his views I hesitate to challenge him; he knows too much.” —Jacob Geerlings, classicist and historian, University of Utah[3] “He knows my field better than I do, and his translations are elegant.” —Mircea Eliade, history of religions, University of Chicago[4] “He struck me as a first-rate intellect.” —Jacob Neusner, Bard College, scholar of Judaism and one of the  most published authors in history[5] “Revelation is not a puppet affair for Mormons. … ‘Do we have a right to tell God his business?’” —Klaus Baer, Egyptology, University of Chicago[6] “Spoke sixteen languages tolerably well and [his] nodding linguistic acquaintanceship included twice that number.” —George Bailey, World War II intelligence school classmate[7] “There are two geniuses in the western states—myself and Hugh Nibley.” —Francis D. Wormuth, political scientist, University of Utah[8] “It is obscene for a man to know that much!” —George MacRae, former dean of the Harvard Divinity School[9] In his prayer at a BYU Commencement, Nibley opened by saying, “Father, we stand here garbed in the black robes of the false priesthood to heap upon us the honors of men.”[10]Nibley was sometimes one of the harshest critics of Brigham Young University, yet one of the Church’s most faithful and loyal advocates: “Hugh is above the fray … because his commitments is so visible and has been so pronounced and so repetitively stated that that’s not even the issue. So then we get on to, ‘What is Hugh saying?’” —Neal A. Maxwell, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles[11] “I have respected him highly for his great scholarship and for his quiet and humble manner. He knows what he is saying, but he does not shout it.” —Gordon B. Hinckley, former president of the Church[12] “During all of the more than fifty years I have known Hugh Nibley, I have been edified, inspired, and motivated by his many writings. I count myself among his foremost admirers and devoted friends.” —Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the First Presidency[13] “One thing that he has that I would give anything to have is the gift of absolute faith. … He has it. I don’t.” —Paul Springer, longtime friend[14] “He is one of a kind—it is a very good kind.” —Boyd K. Packer, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles[15] “I am much too old to try to impress anyone else”[16]People liked Hugh Nibley because he was not afraid to say things that we wish we could say, to espouse unpopular causes, to thumb his nose at fashion, or to buck the crowd: “He’s impatient with mediocrity, he’s impatient with irrelevance, and to the casual eye, that may be seen as eccentricity, when in fact I think it’s a reflection of his deepened discipleship.” —Neal A. Maxwell, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles[17] “The rumpled hat and baggy pants were his own version of the monk’s cassock, a sign not that he didn’t care, but that he knew the danger of caring too much.” —Alex Nibley, son[18] “Few students can talk coherently about their first class from Brother Nibley.” —Robert K. Thomas, former academic vice president of BYU[19] “No one knows what he knows, and that of course also is a problem with knowing him.” —Truman G. Madsen, philosophy, BYU[20] “Does he still talk so fast that no one can understand what he’s saying?” —Sloan Nibley, Hugh’s brother[21] “Sometimes I think I don’t know him at all.” —Phyllis Nibley, Hugh’s wife[22] “If God had wanted my lawn mowed, he would have made grass differently!” —Hugh Nibley, irate when ward members arrived to help clean up his yard In his academic life, his discipleship, and his personal life, there has never been anyone quite like Nibley—and probably will never be again. For more information about “Hugh Nibley Observed,” visit https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/ If you have never seen “The Faith of an Observer,” the entertaining and uplifting biographical video of Hugh Nibley’s life, you are in for a treat. Though the film has been available for many years in an online version made from an old videocassette, for the first time we are posting a much improved digital version. Of great importance for those who want to follow Hugh’s rapid-fire speaking style, this is the first version to contain English subtitles. English, at least, except for the parts where he suddenly breaks into spontaneous German, Arabic, or Egyptian … A pdf transcript of the film and audio files of the video are also available for download. “Faith of an Observer” – Full with captions: “Faith of an Observer” – Excerpts with captions: “Faith of an Observer” transcript “Faith of an Observer” full soundtrack: https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Faith-of-an-Observer.mp3 “Faith of an Observer” excerpts soundtrack: https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Faith-of-an-Observer-short.mp3   References Bradshaw, Jeffrey M., Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock, eds. Hugh Nibley Observed. Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2021. Nibley, Hugh, Brian Capener, and Alex Nibley. 1985. The Faith of an Observer: Conversations with Hugh Nibley (Film transcript). In bhporter.com. http://www.bhporter.com/Hugh%20Nibley/The%20Faith%20of%20an%20Observer%20Conversations%20with%20hugh%20Nibley.pdf. (accessed January 17, 2018). Petersen, Boyd Jay. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. Draper, UT: Greg Kofford Books, 2002. Endnotes [1] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed. [2] Photo ibid., 56. See p. 42 for the story. [3] Ibid., 391. [4] Ibid., 428. [5] Ibid., 450. [6] Ibid., 390. [7] Ibid., 725–26. [8] Ibid., 388–89. [9] Ibid., 469. [10] See ibid., p. 93. [11] H. Nibley et al., Faith, 1. [12] B. J. Petersen, Nibley, back cover of dust jacket. [13] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 596. [14] H. Nibley et al., Faith, 1. [15] B. J. Petersen, Nibley, back cover of dust jacket. [16] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 127. [17] H. Nibley et al., Faith, 1. [18] J. M. Bradshaw et al., Hugh Nibley Observed, 557. [19] Ibid., 405. [20] H. Nibley et al., Faith, 2. [21] Ibid., 1. [22] Ibid., 2.   Jeffrey M. Bradshaw (PhD, cognitive science, University of Washington) is a senior research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) in Pensacola, Florida (www.ihmc.us/groups/jbradshaw; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_M._Bradshaw). His professional writings have explored a wide range of topics in human and machine intelligence (www.jeffreymbradshaw.net). Jeff has written studies on temple themes in the scriptures and the ancient Near East as well as commentaries on the Book of Moses and Genesis 1–11 (www.TempleThemes.net). Jeff was a missionary in France and Belgium from 1975 to 1977, and his family has returned twice to live in France. He is currently a vice president of the Interpreter Foundation, a service missionary for the Department of Church History with a focus on Africa, and a temple ordinance worker in the Meridian Idaho Temple. Jeff and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of four children and fifteen grandchildren. From 2016 to 2019, they served missions in the Democratic Republic of Congo Kinshasa Mission office and the Kinshasa Democratic Republic of the Congo Temple. They now live in Nampa, Idaho. The post Who Was Hugh Nibley?: Announcing a New, Landmark Book, “Hugh Nibley Observed” appeared first on FAIR.