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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n First, though, don\u2019t miss this newly published item on the website of the Interpreter Foundation:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c\u201cOne Peep at the Other Side\u201d: What Did Hugh Nibley\u2019s Near-Death Experience Teach Him about the Purpose of Life?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This portion of today\u2019s post is continued from \u201cAddendum 5: Founding the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative at BYU (Part 1)\u201d<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n PROFESSOR DR MORITZ-MARIA VON IGELFELD often reflected on how fortunate he was to be exactly who he was, and nobody else. When one paused to think of who one might have been had the accident of birth not happened precisely as it did, then, well, one could be quite frankly appalled. . . .<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of the three professors, von Igelfeld was undoubtedly the most distinguished. He was the author of a seminal work on Romance philology,\u00a0Portuguese Irregular Verbs<\/i>, a work of such majesty that it dwarfed all other books in the field. It was a lengthy book of almost twelve hundred pages, and was the result of years of research into the etymology and vagaries of Portuguese verbs. It had been well received \u2014 not that there had ever been the slightest doubt about that \u2014 and indeed one reviewer had simply written, \u2018There is nothing more to be said on this subject. Nothing.\u2019 Von Igelfeld had taken this compliment in the spirit in which it had been intended, but there was in his view a great deal more to be said, largely by way of exposition of some of the more obscure or controversial points touched upon in the book, and for many years he continued to say it. This was mostly done at conferences, where von Igelfeld\u2019s papers on Portuguese irregular verbs were often the highlight of proceedings.\u00a0<\/strong> (Alexander McCall Smith)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So, as I say, Elder Alexander B. Morrison of the Seventy took the idea of a dual-language translation series of classical Arabic texts back with him to Church headquarters, and, as a result of his report, I received an unfunded mandate from Salt Lake City to launch the project.\u00a0 Whether the initial mandate came from the BYU Board of Trustees or from the First Presidency or from the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve or from some other combination of Church leaders I never knew.\u00a0 I never asked.\u00a0 I just never thought to do so.\u00a0 What it meant, though, of course, was that I was to launch the effort but also that, in order to do so, I first had to raise the money to make it possible.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n This was no easy thing.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never liked asking people for their money, and fundraising takes real effort.\u00a0 Every once in a while, somebody simply steps forward \u2014 sometimes almost (or even entirely) without waiting an invitation \u2014 but that\u2019s not usually the case.\u00a0 And only a small proportion of those who are asked to give will actually do so.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Fortunately, the Brethren suggested a name \u2014 that of the late Utah multibillionaire James L. Sorenson<\/a> (1921-2008) \u2014 telling me to ask him<\/em> to support the undertaking.\u00a0 And the BYU Development Office allowed me to call upon one of their donor liasons for help.\u00a0 Eventually, too, the provost of BYU, Bruce Hafen \u2014 later, Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the First Quorum of the Seventy and, thereafter, President Bruce C. Hafen of the St. George Utah Temple \u2014 stepped in, as well.\u00a0 Unfortunately, Brother Sorenson wasn\u2019t initially disposed to give.\u00a0 As I came to know him (and to personally like him) through repeated visits, he made it pretty clear that he was pestered a great deal by people who wanted his money for this purpose or that purpose and that he regarded most such requests as frivolous.\u00a0 He himself lived a relatively simple life, driving a Ford Bronco (if I recall correctly) and occupying a simple and unglamorous office in a not very picturesque industrial area in the southern part of Salt Lake City.\u00a0 He felt, and I had to agree with him, that his fortune did much more good for people when it was invested, as much of it actually was, in the development of medical technology and in genetic research than it would do if it were handed over to\u00a0Dr. Dryasdust for his work on the use of the Greek particle te<\/em> in the fragments of\u00a0Euphorion, Philicus, and Posidippus or to Herr Professor Doktor Totundtrocken to support further research into the social psychology of Japanese fire belly newts.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n With the passage of time, though, to make a long story short, Brother Sorenson did eventually make a donation that enabled me to announce the launch of the Islamic Translation Series at an evening event at the\u00a0Middle East Institute at Columbia University in New York City.\u00a0 (Thereby hang several interesting and often amusing tales that I will not share here \u2014 including a private lunch in which a third of the Quorum of the Twelve effectively pitched in on my behalf as fundraising assistants, to no avail, and during whicn President Howard W. Hunter said something that still makes me laugh even today \u2014 but that I have sometimes recounted orally in small groups and that I will probably, someday, write up and deposit among my papers in BYU Special Collections.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019ll tell the President Hunter story before then, though.\u00a0 It won\u2019t embarrass anybody who is still alive.)\u00a0 Soon thereafter, I found that I had unexpectedly become something of a minor folk hero with the BYU Development Office.\u00a0 It turned out that they had been trying to secure donations from Brother Sorenson to BYU for many years, but without success.\u00a0 Had I been aware of that long record of failure, I might never have made the attempt.\u00a0 But, as the saying goes, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I recall one aspect of the event at Columbia that made a particular impression on me.\u00a0 My announcement was brief, and there were plenty of other things and people on the program.\u00a0 When the formal affair was over, though, one particular man rushed up to shake my hand and to ask me a question.\u00a0 It was the ambassador to the United Nations from the Islamic Republic of Iran.\u00a0 He pumped my hand excitedly, and asked me \u201cWhy are the Mormons<\/em> doing this?\u201d\u00a0 I was a bit surprised.\u00a0 I had said absolutely nothing about the Mormons or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.\u00a0 Obviously, though, he knew something about Brigham Young University and about who sponsored it.\u00a0 I can\u2019t really recall how I answered his question.\u00a0 But I would be asked that question many more times, and I gradually came up with a pretty standard answer.\u00a0 I\u2019ll share it here at some future point.\u00a0 I think that the first time that I came up with it was during a brief telephone interview with Gustav Niebuhr, then a religion writer for the New York Times\u00a0<\/em>who is also, among other things, a grandson of H. Richard Niebuhr<\/a> and a great nephew of Reinhold Niebuhr<\/a>, two of America\u2019s most distinguished Protestant theologians.\u00a0\u00a0(See \u201cReligion Journal; A Professor in Nanjing Takes Up Jewish Studies.\u201d<\/a>)\u00a0 Unfortunately, he didn\u2019t use it.\u00a0 As he explained to me, he had only a very little space left to him in an article that he had already basically written, but he had only just heard that Brigham Young University was doing an Islamic Translation Series, and he was totally intrigued.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Right now, however, I want to get in another word about funding for the translation project:\u00a0 Eventually, I received some additional budgetary help, and in an interesting way.\u00a0 I was walking one day through what was then known as the BYU Bookstore.\u00a0 (Today, it\u2019s just the \u201cBYU Store.\u201d\u00a0 But the sad demise of bookstores is too melancholy a tale for me to want to tackle it just now.\u00a0 Not from here in Hawaii, with a breeze blowing through the palm trees and the sound of the surf pounding gently away in the distance.)\u00a0 Anyway, across the store, I saw that Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve was standing all alone, browsing in a book.\u00a0 Actually, it\u2019s something of a distortion to say that he was all alone.\u00a0 There was, truth be told, virtually a perfect circle of BYU students standing around him, pretending themselves to be browsing among the bookshelves.\u00a0 Elder Maxwell was the center of the circle, of course, and its radius was roughly twenty or thirty feet.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n By this time, I had already had some very limited contact with Elder Maxwell, but I determined immediately that I would not bother him, that I would allow him to continue to leaf through his book undisturbed.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I had begun to walk past him at a distance of approximately fifteen or twenty feet when he looked up and called out \u201cDan!\u201d\u00a0 So I walked over to him.\u00a0 He explained that he had been on campus for meetings with the University president and other officers and that, as he put it, his wife Colleen had given him permission to look at some books in the BYU Bookstore while he was down from Church headquarters.\u00a0 He asked me how the translation project was coming, and I responded that I was still in fundraising mode.\u00a0 \u201cOh,\u201d he said, \u201cyou shouldn\u2019t have to spend your time begging for money.\u201d\u00a0 Elder Maxwell had served from 1970 until 1976 as the Commissioner of Church Education (after a career mostly spent at the University of Utah, where he had eventually become the University\u2019s executive vice president); Henry B. Eyring was the Commissioner at the time of this conversation.\u00a0 The Commissioner of Church Education , Elder Maxwell told me, had a little \u201cslush fund\u201d of discretionary money to spend on special projects \u2014 slush fund<\/em> was exactly the phrase that he used, with a twinkle in his eye \u2014 and so, he said, \u201cI\u2019ll talk to Hal a little bit; he can help you out.\u201d\u00a0 And, indeed, the Church did help.\u00a0 The financial needs of the translation project weren\u2019t particularly enormous and, between Jim Sorenson and the Commissioner\u2019s office, we were off to a reasonably good start.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t sure, though, how I was going to proceed.\u00a0 But then, shortly after that event at Columbia University, I was back in upstate New York to participate in a conference on ancient Greek and medieval Islamic philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton (or, as it tends to be called these days, at Binghamton University).\u00a0 Sitting in on one session, I heard the host of the conference, Professor Parviz Morewedge (pronounced either as the English more<\/strong>-wedge<\/em> or as the more authentically Arabo-Persian mur-ah<\/strong>-wij;<\/em> he himself doesn\u2019t seem to care much, one way or the other), close a presentation by describing his dream of a bilingual translation series devoted to the great works of the Islamicate philosophical and scientific tradition.\u00a0 I made a beeline for him and introduced myself.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n He became my very vivid and colorful friend and my indispensable associate in the work of launching the Islamic Translation Series.\u00a0 He knows everybody, and he has a positive genius for getting them to want to do things that they would never otherwise have done.\u00a0 Once again, I could tell you stories.\u00a0 Oh, yes indeed.\u00a0 Lots of them.\u00a0 Including some very funny ones.\u00a0 But I won\u2019t.\u00a0 Not right now, anyway.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n To be continued.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Ka\u2019anapali, Maui, Hawai\u2019i<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 First, though, don\u2019t miss this newly published item on the website of the Interpreter Foundation: \u00a0 \u201c\u201cOne Peep at the Other Side\u201d: What Did Hugh Nibley\u2019s Near-Death Experience Teach Him about the Purpose of Life?\u201d \u00a0 *** \u00a0 This portion of today\u2019s post is continued from \u201cAddendum 5: Founding the Middle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12005,1821,198,20782,2091,455,23026,1152,1149,1809,13109,19582,15541,7248,19826,19829,10555,66,2950,1776,16250,23029,23032,6981,2905,1812,1815,1782,996,6864,1779,16253,16256,23023,788,55,1667,23017,1769,7608,999,10096,23020,2532,22660],"class_list":["post-91142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alexander","tag-apostle","tag-arabic","tag-arabic-language","tag-arabic-literature","tag-arabic-translation","tag-binghamton","tag-brigham-young-university","tag-byu","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-columbia","tag-columbia-university","tag-council-of-the-twelve","tag-daniel","tag-daniel-c-peterson","tag-daniel-carl-peterson","tag-elder","tag-islam","tag-islamic","tag-islamic-translation-series","tag-islamicate","tag-james-l-sorenson","tag-james-levoy-sorenson","tag-james-sorenson","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-latter-day-saints","tag-lds","tag-meti","tag-middle-east","tag-middle-eastern","tag-middle-eastern-texts-initiative","tag-mideast","tag-mideastern","tag-morewedge","tag-mormon","tag-mormonism","tag-mormons","tag-morrison","tag-muslim","tag-neal-a-maxwell","tag-near-east","tag-near-eastern","tag-parviz","tag-peterson","tag-twelve-apostles"],"yoast_head":"\n