One of my fellow saints recently asked me what I think of the late Hugh Nibley’s work. I began by saying that although I may have become disenchanted with his general approach, I continue to be impressed by how much he knew. Intimidated even. Next I mentioned some things I had picked up reading around in his biography, items that humanized him for me and made him someone I could still relate to, items such as his reluctance to take on the Book of Abraham academically and his breakdown/stroke and hospitalization in 1974 while working on The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri. Like all influential figures, Nibley ought to be reread, not merely dismissed out of hand as outdated and outmoded.

My interlocutor then asked what I meant when I said that I had become disenchanted. Hesitating some, I essentialized the Nibley approach: the amassing of parallels in ancient texts as proof of Mormonism based on the assumption that they were unknown to Joseph Smith, so the prophet must have arrived in the same place through revelation, of course. I explained that this approach to defending the church was actually–and not without irony–liable to do more harm than good, in my opinion. After the assumption is admitted and the parallels amassed, all that some punk needs to do is reverse the polarity, and voila, it looks like Mormonism can be accounted for through the transmission of antiquity to the 1800s. This is especially the case because Nibley tended to downplay the differences between the ancient parallels and Mormonism, while exploiting (some would say embellishing) the similarities. And so the LDS academic may be faced with the onerous task of undoing what has been done, de-emphasizing the similarities and stressing the differences, in order to show that Mormonism is not reducible to the transmission of antiquity to the 1800s, and so that Joseph Smith can be understood and appreciated as creative genius, exegete, theologian, innovator.

Consider, if you will, for example, what would have happened if instead of saying these words in his 1954 KSL radio broadcast entitled “Time Vindicates the Prophets” (The World and the Prophets [third edition; 1987, p.170-1])

With the exception of the verse just cited above [1 Cor 15:29], a few perplexing commentaries on it, and the unnoticed passage from the Pastor of Hermas, all our evidence for the practice of baptism for the dead in ancient times comes from fragments recently discovered. The possession of this strange and wonderful thing by the restored Church of Jesus Christ for over a hundred years would therefore seem to be an almost foolproof certificate of authenticity. The prophets of modern times remember the dead exactly as did those prophets of old, and in the growing evidence for the nature of that work among the first Christians, time has vindicated the prophets.

… Nibley had cited the following remark from Albert Schweitzer’s earlier monograph on The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (English translation; 1998, p.290):

Since Hermas, no theologian has had the courage to tackle the problem and solve it in this gallant fashion. All of them carefully evade the problem of the necessity of the sacraments and of the extension of the results of the death of Jesus to pre-Christian humanity. They make, for example, the pre-Christian generations attain to blessedness through Christ, between His death and resurrection, preaching to the spirits of the lower world, as is already assumed in the First Epistle of Peter (iii 19-20). But the problem is not only whether they receive the knowledge of Jesus and become believers, but rather how without a real act of faith and without sacraments they can enter into blessedness.

To say that Joseph Smith had the courage to tackle the problem and was able to solve it on what is a broader scale and in what is arguably an even more gallant fashion may sound a bit hollow when compared to notions of unmediated divine revelation. But is it not at least preferable to the situation that arises when our cherished parallels turn out to work against us?

What does it mean to say that Joseph Smith or anyone else saw God, Jesus, angels, resurrected beings in visions? What can be claimed about deity from them? What kind of knowledge does the visionary possess and how is it acquired? Does it matter whether visions happen in the mind of the visionary while asleep, in a trance, unconscious? If not seen and heard with literal eyes and ears, must visions be discounted as non-factual, a-historical, un-true?
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Shamelessly jumping on the bandwagon …

The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical translation is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations.

Would anyone care to guess what this means (whether new or not)?

A. different texts = other modern translations of the Bible
B. different texts = critical editions of the Bible in ancient languages
C. different texts = non-specific, all inclusive of anything besides KJV
D. none of the above

The Book of Mormon contains an allegory or two, maybe more than the New Testament, and it presupposes a typological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. But if my perception is accurate, as a whole we are not very willing to interpret the Book of Mormon other than literally. Which is curious, not because the boundaries between literal and non-literal interpretation are questionable, being tied up with appeals to (objective) history and authorial intent, but because the Book of Mormon itself offers at least one non-literal interpretation of itself. Referring to the Liahona, Alma tells Helaman:

And now, my son, I would that ye should understand that these things are not without a shadow; for as our fathers were slothful to give heed to this compass (now these things were temporal) they did not prosper; even so it is with things which are spiritual. For behold, it is as easy to give heed to the word of Christ, which will point to you a straight course to eternal bliss, as it was for our fathers to give heed to this compass, which would point unto them a straight course to the promised land. And now I say, is there not a type in this thing? For just as surely as this director did bring our fathers, by following its course, to the promised land, shall the words of Christ, if we follow their course, carry us beyond this vale of sorrow into a far better land of promise.

If Alma can read sections of 1 Nephi other than literally, why can’t we do the same? Before getting too carried away, it should be noted that Alma gives no indication of doubt as to the historicity of the Liahona. In fact, he would have had the compass in his possession along with the records and interpreters that he was entrusting to Helaman. That is, for Alma, non-literal interpretation was not necessarily mutually exclusive of literal; literal interpretation need not be threatened by non-literal.

With this in mind, I’d like to issue a friendly challenge. Liken the scriptures to yourselves and do what Alma did. Read the Book of Mormon typologically or allegorically and see what happens. Should you need inspiration, you might consider Middle- and Neo-platonic interpretation of Homer, in which Odysseus is read as the soul, Circe as the danger of reincarnation, the Cyclops as attempted suicide, and the cave of Nymphs as the cosmos in miniature. As Porphyry writes, “when one takes into consideration the ancient wisdom and the vast intelligence of Homer … one cannot reject the idea that he has hinted at images of more divine things in molding his little story.”