Hugh Nibley writings that changed the church
By Michael De Groote, Deseret News
Published: Thursday, March 11 2010 12:18 a.m. MST
Summary
Hugh Nibley was an editor’s dream. He was an editor’s nightmare as well.
PROVO, Utah — Hugh Nibley was an editor’s dream.”He worked incredibly
rapidly and spoke spontaneously and elegantly on timely issues,” John
W. Welch said.
Hugh Nibley was an editor’s nightmare as well.”Using unusual sources
and dozens of languages, his footnotes were amazingly correct — but
very difficult to source check,” Welch said.
Around 1985, Nibley told Welch that LDS Church President Spencer W.
Kimball had promised Nibley that he would not die until his work here
on this earth was finished. “I decided that I wasn’t going to push Hugh
to finish this book (‘One Eternal Round’) any sooner than he wanted.
Because then his work on Earth would have been finished,” Welch said,
tongue in cheek, “and I didn’t want to contribute to a premature
demise.”
Welch, the Robert K. Thomas Professor of Law at BYU and the current
editor in chief of BYU Studies, spoke on Wednesday, March 10, at the
opening session of the BYU Studies Jubilee Symposium which continues
March 12-13 at BYU.
“I see Nibley’s works as a great river of ideas constantly flowing into
the fountain of all righteousness, to which I hope we all
may become tributaries,” Welch said.
For 26 years Welch was the general editor of “The Collected Works of
Hugh Nibley,” a series of volumes that ended this month with the
publication of volume 19, “One Eternal Round,”
considered Nibley’s masterwork. It arrives just in time for what would
have been the late Nibley’s 100th birthday on March 27.
“I see his influence as being more needed today than ever before,”
Welch said. That influence is found to a great extent in the writings
of Nibley. At the BYU Studies Symposium, it isn’t surprising that Welch
would recommend exploring Nibley through that publication.
“If you want a good point of entry — to get into Hugh Nibley — the
mass of his works can be very daunting,” Welch said. “But the articles
in BYU Studies are a good place to start. They are accessible,
readable, interesting and cover the whole range of most of the things
he was interested in.”
1965 — The Expanding Gospel
Nibley’s first article to appear in BYU Studies. “Here in
1965 he spoke about the big picture of the plan of salvation,” Welch said.
1968 — Prolegomena to Any Study of the Book of Abraham
Getting Ready to Begin, an editorial
As Things Stand at the Moment
The 1967 discovery of some of the Joseph Smith papyri “jumpstarted
Nibley’s career-changing track moving off the Book of Mormon and onto
the Book of Abraham,” Welch said. “Nibley had begun studying Egyptian
almost a decade early, wondering, himself, ‘Why?’ Now he knew why.”
1969 — How to Have a Quiet Campus, Antique Style
Spiro T. Agnew spoke at BYU while vice president of the United States under President Richard M.
Nixon. Nibley responded with what Welch called a “bluntly truthful
satirical masterpiece.” Using coded language, Nibley criticized the ancient Greek practice of focusing education
pursuits on careers and using dress and grooming codes to reign in
student dissent. “Only Hugh could entertain us so well, while being so
deadly serious,” Welch said.
1970 — Educating the Saints — A Brigham Young Mosaic
Welch said this “should be required reading for all LDS scholars,
students and educators.” Nibley warns against ulterior motives in
seeking an education.
1971 — What is “The Book of Breathings?”
The Meaning of the Kirtland Egyptian Papers
Nibley saw a pattern of education in the Kirtland Egyptian Papers. “A
pattern that we must all follow in seeking greater light and
knowledge,” Welch said.
1973 — Review Essay of “Bar-Kochba” by Yigael Yadin
Nibley points out in this essay how the Book of Mormon name Alma is
found in ancient Israel — proving that it was a Jewish name from
ancient times.
1974 — Beyond Politics
This article was not included in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley at
Nibley’s request, according to Welch. It wasn’t polished enough for
Nibley’s tastes. But in it, Welch sees a “harbinger of things to come”
in later Nibley essays.
1975 — The Passing of the Church: Forty Variations on an Unpopular Theme
This was a reprint of an early article Nibley had written for a non-Mormon audience about the Great Apostacy.
1978 — The Early Christian Prayer Circle
“This brilliant piece, showing that in the obscure texts the apostles
and their wives indeed gathered in circles to pray together with
Jesus,” Welch said. It shows the ideas of Joseph Smith about temples
was not strange to the early Christians.
1985 — Scriptural Perspectives on How to Survive the Calamities of the Last Days
“Could there be any subject still more relevant?” Welch asked.
“In all of this we have been changed,” Welch said. “Since Hugh Nibley,
we as a people are not the same. We are fed, but we must still plough.”
E-mail: mdegroote@desnews.com
Michael De Groote
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