“My recollections of Hugh Nibley go back a generation. My father, Marc Ricks, and Nibley were both doctoral students at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1930s, my father majoring in chemistry and Nibley in ancient history. Both attended church...
read more“Hugh Nibley was a paradox. He often quoted Joseph Smith’s pessimistic appraisal of humankind’s inability to govern itself, but he also participated in the political process with the same commitment and energy he gave to the military, another institution for which he...
read more“Even though what I offer is a personal remembrance, I hope that what I have to say will in some measure speak both for and to others whose lives have or should have been influenced by him. Obviously, others have their own stories of how and why they came to know (or...
read more“I have known Hugh Nibley for over fifty years. He was my teacher at BYU in the winter of 1954. I can’t remember why I took Hugh Nibley’s “Rise of the Western Church to 600 A.D.,” but its impact on my intellectual horizons was enormous. Professor Nibley was the first...
read more“Nibley treats Mormon scripture primarily through parallels. While we need not pay any attention to those shallow critics of Nibley who merely shout “Parallelomania,” as if it were a magical incantation, and reject his whole methodology and corpus out of hand (drawing...
read morePart of our book chapter reprint series, this article originally appeared in Hugh Nibley Observed, edited by Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Shirley S. Ricks, and Stephen T. Whitlock. For more information, go to https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/hugh-nibley-observed/....
read more“At first light on June 6, 1944, the first of many allied landing craft began hitting the beaches of Normandy. At Utah Beach, twelve men dangling from one of the emerging jeeps cheered their driver on as they surged up from beneath the surface of the chilly English...
read more“The verbal bookkeeping that is often useful in presenting complex people is hopelessly ineffective in giving a balanced account of Hugh Nibley. To begin with, on which side of the ledger do we post his glorious absentmindedness? Dental appointments missed may be a...
read more“I’m going to be talking about Hugh Nibley and Egyptology in the Book of Abraham, and I’d like to begin by talking about how the decision was made to finally publish Hugh’s book One Eternal Round.1 On February 23, 2005, I, along with a group of colleagues, including...
read more“Flannery O’Connor, a southern writer of no small reputation, was once asked how she saw her own work in relation to the writings of William Faulkner.1 She replied that no one wanted her horse and buggy stalled on the tracks the Dixie Limited was coming down. That...
read more“I was a semi-literate Idaho farm boy, something of a loner, when, in my mid-teens, I discovered Hugh Nibley’s late-1940s articles in The Improvement Era. Nibley had answers to questions I had about the Restoration in general and especially the Book of Mormon, a...
read more“it is not surprising that the hero which the BYU community has chosen to revere through its stories is Professor Hugh W. Nibley, a man who has excelled in both scholarly and religious pursuits. Nibley’s genius and devotion have combined with his eccentricity and...
read more“In a little green house one block south of BYU campus lives the widow of well-known Latter-day Saint historian Hugh Nibley. Phyllis Draper Nibley, now seventy-nine years old, has lived in her Provo home for fifty years. She was born nearby in Salt Lake City, August...
read more“So, Hugh Nibley has two lawyers speaking at his funeral. Good thing he appreciated irony! I have laughed and wept as I have written this final examination. Speaking on behalf of all who have taken a Nibley class, attended a Nibley fireside, source checked a footnote,...
read more“Because Egyptology is a rarified discipline that normally takes years of training, people may wonder just how good Hugh Nibley was at Egyptology. The simple answer is that he was quite good. The complicated answer is that he had his strengths and weaknesses, as all...
read more“My personal experience of working with Hugh Nibley’s books and manuscripts began in the late 1980s when there was a big push to get several books out in time for the upcoming year when the Book of Mormon would be the focus for our Gospel Doctrine classes. Our family...
read more“I left BYU in 1968 after suffering, as a passenger, in six months’ time what normally would have been two fatal automobile accidents. Already having been admitted to University of California, Santa Barbara, Professor Nibley told me that if I came back to complete...
read more“To those who know him best, and least, Hugh W. Nibley is a prodigy, an enigma, and a symbol. The origins he pursues as a historian are sometimes obscure. His own origins are clear. More dominant than recessive is his inheritance from one of the early Jewish converts...
read more“I would like to establish the context for a consideration of Hugh Nibley as a mentor by turning back the calendar to an earlier time. Although the comparison I wish to make does not match up in every detail, I believe the similarities justify placing Nibley alongside...
read more“Let me begin by telling you a little bit about myself via Brother Nibley. I have come to understand that has become somewhat part of the genre of speaking about Brother Nibley—to share Nibley anecdotes and how you know him. Now, here I am considerably handicapped...
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