My late friend John Tvedtnes and I

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I suppose that I should respond to this before it takes on a kind of eternal life of its own, as these defamatory legends tend to do:

It relates to my late friend John Tvedtnes, who worked for many years as a senior resident scholar and senior research associate at the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, or FARMS.  I first met John in January 1978, when he was a teacher in BYU’s Jerusalem study abroad program and a graduate student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; I had just arrived as a study abroad student, and I still remember his initial orientation lecture to our group at the old Hotel Vienna in the Sheikh Jarrah area on the Arab side of the city.  I had, by then, become quite zealously pro-Palestinian, and I actually took issue with several things that he said that evening.  I came to know him much better thereafter, and to appreciate him.  But he was a teacher and I was a student.  We weren’t yet “friends.”  That came later.  Life went on.  I earned a doctorate, joined the faculty at Brigham Young University, and become involved with FARMS.  John, on the other hand, returned to the States and worked in a series of jobs that I thought (and that I expect he thought) represented a squandering of his superb training and his considerable talents.  Although I don’t grant myself full credit for getting him on at FARMS, I certainly played a significant role in it and it may even have been my idea.  I simply don’t recall.  It was the kind of thing that I did on several occasions, when I saw people with excellent relevant training who, I thought, would probably not land an academic appointment.  (In the end, though definitely not in John’s case, that habit came back to bite me.  As the trite but true statement has it, no good deed goes unpunished.)

Anyway, it’s now being publicly claimed that John was suppressed at FARMS, and that he was forced out of the organization.  And it scarcely needs to be said that I played a central role in this unjust wickedness.  To paraphrase Amos 3:6, ““shall there be evil in a city, and Dan Peterson hath not done it?”

Apparently, the demise of John Tvedtnes began with research on Ezekiel 37:15-19.  He supposedly “discovered” that this prophecy had nothing to do with the Book of Mormon.  (Which, of course, has always been the position of all non-LDS exegetes.)  Now, it should be noted that I’m hearing this at minimally third hand; it’s one critic of the Church summarizing what another critic of the Church claims to have heard from John Tvedtnes.  But let’s assume that the claim is accurate:  His position doesn’t seem dramatically different from my own position.  I think it fairly obvious that the primary meaning of the prophecy cannot refer to the Book of Mormon, although I think it perfectly reasonable to extend the meaning of the passage metaphorically or analogically to the Book of Mormon and the Bible.  I don’t recall ever discussing this topic with John, but it’s certainly possible that, like me, he had come to such a view.

What’s now being said, though, is that John tried to publish his earth-shattering discovery and that it was suppressed.  Somewhere.  At this point, allegedly, an unnamed General Authority told him that, although his research was valid and his conclusion true, the Church wasn’t “ready” for what he had learned.  And that, it seems, was the end of John’s publishing.  FARMS, led by El Diablo himself — thats me, of course — shut him out.  Whether obeying the decree of an anonymous tyrannical General Authority or obeying our own evil counsels, we conspired against him and betrayed him and we refused ever to publish anything by John Tvedtnes ever again.  He became a non-person.  He was, as the mafiosi say, dead to us.  Somehow, we even exiled him to Arkansas, where he died in obscurity in June of 2018.

I’ve never heard this gripping story before, and I have no idea whether there’s even the barest kernel of truth in it or, if so, where that kernel might be.

Here’s what I do know:  John Tvedtnes died at the age of seventy-seven.  He wasn’t forced out of FARMS or its successor organization, the Maxwell Institute.  He retired, having worked well past the usual retirement age.  He and his wife then moved to Arkansas for health reasons (hers, I think) because of its lower altitude and, if I’m not mistaken, because they had family there.  During the first two years after I myself was purged from the Maxwell Institute — which is to say, during the first two years of the existence of the Interpreter Foundation — he joined our editorial board and published three articles in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:

“Variants in the Stories of the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the Apostle Paul”

“Biblical and Non-Biblical Quotes in the Sermons and Epistles of Paul”

“When Was Christ Born?”

But then began a series of increasingly debilitating strokes that made it harder and harder for him to use a computer or even to speak.

In 2017, however, he published “Tree of Life, Tree of Healing,” in “To Seek the Law of the Lord”: Essays in Honor of John W. Welch, ed. Paul Y. Hoskisson and Daniel C. Peterson (Orem, UT: The Interpreter Foundation, 2017), 495–520. Further information at https://interpreterfoundation.org/books/to-seek-the-law-of-the-lord-essays-in-honor-of-john-w-welch-2/.]  This article has now been republished in Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship:  “Tree of Life, Tree of Healing.”

John died on 3 June 2018.  This is what I wrote about him for the Interpreter Foundation at his death:  “John Tvedtnes”

The story that’s now being told leaves me with several questions.  For instance, did John write his alleged article for the Ensign?  If so, I could understand why a General Authority might have been involved and why there might have been at least a bit of sensitivity about Ezekiel 37.  Did he write it for some FARMS publication or other?  Then I don’t believe the claim of General Authority involvement.  And I, at least, would have had absolutely no problem with his making the argument about Ezekiel’s prophecy that he was supposedly making.  Moreover, I would be surprised to hear that anybody else at FARMS or the Maxwell Institute had a problem with it.

I liked John Tvedtnes.  I first met him in early 1978, fully forty-three years ago.  I knew him most of my life.  I considered him a friend.  Still, having watched the behavior of certain critics over many years now, I suppose that I shouldn’t really be surprised.  But I confess that I have been surprised to see my late friend John Tvedtnes weaponized against me on the basis of flat-out falsehoods, innuendos, and malevolent speculations.  But there you have it.  And I can confidently guarantee that this won’t be the last time that such a thing will happen.