101 Facts About Hugh Nibley

Hugh Winder Nibley was an American scholar and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who was a professor at Brigham Young University for nearly 50 years.

Hugh Nibley was a prolific author, and wrote apologetic works supporting the archaeological, linguistic, and historical claims of Joseph Smith.

Hugh Nibley was a member of the LDS Church, and wrote and lectured on LDS scripture and doctrinal topics, publishing many articles in the LDS Church magazines.

Nibley was born in Portland, Oregon, and his family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1921, where Nibley attended middle school and high school.

Hugh Nibley served an LDS mission in Germany, where he learned German.

Hugh Nibley received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1938.

Hugh Nibley taught various subjects at Claremont Colleges until he enlisted in the United States Army in 1942, where he was trained as an intelligence officer as part of the Ritchie Boys.

Hugh Nibley became a professor at Brigham Young University in 1946, where he taught foreign languages and Christian church history.

Hugh Nibley continued to study Egyptian and Coptic, and became the figurehead of the Institute for Ancient Studies at BYU in 1973.

Hugh Nibley published multiple series of articles in the Improvement Era as well as An Approach to the Book of Mormon, which was the lesson manual for Melchizedek priesthood lessons in 1957.

Hugh Nibley published a response to the Joseph Smith Papyri as well as other articles on the Pearl of Great Price.

Kent P Jackson and Douglas F Salmon have argued that the parallels Nibley finds between ancient culture and LDS works are selective or imprecise.

Hugh Nibley was born in Portland, Oregon, son of Alexander Nibley and Agnes Sloan.

Alexander Hugh Nibley served as mission president of the Liege Conference.

In 1917, Hugh Nibley's family moved to Medford, Oregon, where his father started to manage his father's sugar beet company.

The next year at age eight, Hugh Nibley was baptized into the LDS Church.

Hugh Nibley's parents employed a music tutor and a French tutor for their children as well.

Hugh Nibley's family moved to Los Angeles in 1921, where Hugh Nibley's father participated in the burgeoning real-estate market and was part of Los Angeles's high society.

Hugh Nibley attended Alta Loma Middle School from 1921 until 1923.

Hugh Nibley graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1927, where he was friends with John Cage.

Hugh Nibley spent the summer of 1925 working in a lumber mill.

In 1926, Hugh Nibley's poems appeared in the Improvement Era and The Lyric West.

Hugh Nibley spent six weeks alone in the wilderness near Crater Lake, excited to experience solitude and to "get back to nature" like the transcendentalists.

Hugh Nibley took part and excelled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps.

Hugh Nibley's parents were worried about his social development and felt that an LDS mission would help him have more contact with people.

In November 1927, Hugh Nibley received his temple endowment, and studied at the Salt Lake Mission Home to serve an LDS mission in Germany until 1929.

Hugh Nibley spent his first three weeks in Germany learning German in Cologne with other missionaries.

In June 1933, Hugh Nibley used his knowledge of shorthand and typing when he served a short-term mission in the northwestern states as the mission stenographer.

Hugh Nibley returned in time to start his PhD at UC Berkeley in September 1934.

Hugh Nibley's father asked him to loan the money to him and did not repay it.

Hugh Nibley found a job translating Latin, but because his funds were severely limited, he moved from the expensive International House to a cheap apartment, where his neighbors spoke Arabic.

Hugh Nibley taught alongside scholars fleeing from Germany, including Thomas Mann, and once co-taught a class with retired professor Everett Dean Martin.

Hugh Nibley acted as a secretary when prominent intellectuals spoke at the Committee on War Objectives and Peace Aims.

Hugh Nibley studied more languages, including Irish, Babylonian, Russian, Italian, and Spanish.

Hugh Nibley sought out native speakers to converse with when possible.

Hugh Nibley resigned from Claremont in June 1942, and then enlisted as a private in the United States Army for World War II.

Hugh Nibley's commanding officer recommended him for officer training, and he attended military intelligence training in the United States Army Intelligence Center at Camp Ritchie in western Maryland.

Hugh Nibley became a Master Sergeant along with his fellow Order of Battle graduates.

Hugh Nibley instructed officers and other men in the 101st Airborne Division about the German Order of Battle.

Hugh Nibley was part of the Utah Beach division during the D-Day invasion, and landed by glider at Eindhoven as part of Operation Market Garden.

Hugh Nibley gathered intelligence on German war movements from civilians, documents, and POWs.

Hugh Nibley visited Dachau concentration camp a few days after its liberation.

On his own time, Nibley wrote a detailed response to Fawn M Brodie's significant biography of Joseph Smith, No Man Knows My History.

Hugh Nibley's patronizing language, Helfrich posited, could be a reflection of Hugh Nibley's own "patriarchalism and paternalism".

Hugh Nibley promised to pay his roommate one cent for every mistake he made in Russian and two cents for every English word he spoke.

Hugh Nibley taught courses in Greek and Russian alongside Christian church history his first year.

Hugh Nibley arranged for the purchase of over five hundred volumes on the early Christian church for the BYU Library; these volumes now make up the library's Ancient Studies Reading Room.

Hugh Nibley acquired volumes in Old Norse from the Icelandic community in Spanish Fork.

In 1954, Hugh Nibley was on the advisory board for a student club focused on "the integration of sundry areas of scientific and spiritual truth" called "Alpha and Omega".

Hugh Nibley published in Western Political Quarterly, Western Speech, and Jewish Quarterly Review in the 1950s.

Hugh Nibley studied Egyptian with Klaus Baer, a new faculty member.

Hugh Nibley was the only student in the Coptic class after several weeks, and one of two students in the Egyptian class.

Hugh Nibley decided to stay at BYU, and requested to stop teaching language classes.

Hugh Nibley published a two-part article in Jewish Quarterly Review in October 1959 and January 1960 called "Christian Envy of the Temple", which discussed how early Christians desired temple rites.

When Hugh Nibley returned to BYU, religion faculty were debating on whether a class on the Book of Mormon or on fundamental LDS Church doctrines should be the required religion class.

Robert M Grant argued that Nibley had taken statements from church fathers out of context.

Hugh Nibley published articles in Revue de Qumran, Vigiliae Christianae, and Concilium: An International Review of Theology in 1965,1966, and 1967, respectively.

Hugh Nibley was offered a position to teach at the Clarion State College, but refused.

In 1973, BYU president Dallin H Oaks convinced Nibley to be the director of the Institute for Ancient Studies at BYU, with an assistant director to take care of the administrative aspects.

Hugh Nibley maintained a small office in the Harold B Lee Library, working on his magnum opus, titled One Eternal Round, focusing on the hypocephalus in the Book of Abraham.

Notable students of Hugh Nibley include Kresimir Cosic, Avraham Gileadi, John Gee, and Benjamin Urrutia.

Hugh Nibley taught and eventually baptized Cosic, continuing their gospel discussions until Cosic graduated in 1973.

Hugh Nibley was an active Democrat and a conservationist, pacifist, and anti-materialist.

Hugh Nibley was strongly opposed to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War.

Hugh Nibley further criticized LDS culture in his 1983 speech "Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift" for encouraging students to please their superiors and "not make waves", which Hugh Nibley argued was a sign of a decline in culture.

Hugh Nibley felt that students were more concerned about their appearance than their studies.

In contrast to the coats and ties he wore at dinners as a teenager in a wealthy home, Hugh Nibley himself cultivated an appearance of not caring about his appearance.

Two of his colleagues related stories of Hugh Nibley contributing to a church collection to buy a new overcoat for someone, not realizing that the person was him.

One BYU professor said that Hugh Nibley was proud of his unkempt look, joking that they would never make him department chairman at BYU.

That year, Hugh Nibley received many letters with questions about religion from members who read his book.

Hugh Nibley compiled reports on various topics to answer frequently asked questions from readers and to inform general authorities.

Hamblin stated that Hugh Nibley ignored significant differences between Near Eastern cultures and occurrences in the Book of Mormon.

Hugh Nibley published several series in the Improvement Era about the Book of Mormon for a general LDS audience.

In 1954, Hugh Nibley discussed the circumstances around the early Christian apostasy in a series of thirty talks on a weekly devotional on KSL in 1954.

Hugh Nibley wrote a series for the Improvement Era on the same topic in 1955, and other series on the Jaredites and Book of Mormon criticism in the late 1950s.

Hugh Nibley continued to write about evidences of the Book of Mormon's ancient origins in a series of articles published in the Improvement Era between 1964 and 1967.

Hugh Nibley published Sounding Brass: Informal Studies in the Lucrative Art of Telling Stories about Brigham Young and the Mormons, which addressed not only the claims in Wallace's book but many other claims about Brigham Young.

The First Presidency asked Hugh Nibley to respond to the papyri.

In 1975, Hugh Nibley published a translation and commentary of the papyri.

Hugh Nibley continued to write about Abraham, publishing Abraham in Egypt in 1981.

Hugh Nibley focused on showing that Joseph Smith's writings in the Pearl of Great Price were inspired and derived from ancient texts.

Marvin S Hill criticized Nibley for comparing the Book of Abraham to records from hundreds of years after Abraham; Louis Midgley criticized Hill for misunderstanding Nibley's argument, which was to compare the Book of Abraham against existent parallel literature that was unknown to Joseph Smith.

In 1985, church leaders were contemplating changes to the temple endowment and asked Hugh Nibley to write on the "history and significance of the endowment" for them.

In 1986, Hugh Nibley presented one essay on the temple to the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, with another, longer essay on the history of the endowment given for support material.

Concerned that his historical arguments in Since Cumorah were overshadowing the main message of the Book of Mormon, Hugh Nibley shifted his writing on the Book of Mormon to focus on sermons about the book's prophetic message.

Hugh Nibley still wrote about the historicity of the Book of Abraham after 1967.

Eugene England's review of Since Cumorah and Approaching Zion, volumes 7 and 9 of Hugh Nibley's collected works, identified Hugh Nibley as a Cassandra figure.

Salmon noted that some of the parallels Hugh Nibley found between the Pearl of Great Price and ancient texts were extremely selective, and others were imprecise, inconsequential, or misrepresented sources: "parallelomania".

Hugh Nibley stated that some of Nibley's published work was not intended for publication, like his speeches, and that fact-checkers had to supply footnotes on their own.

Gary P Gillum, the ancient studies librarian during the time Nibley worked at BYU, reviewed the book in BYU Studies.

From 1982 to 1984, Hugh's son Alex Nibley organized the filming of interviews with Nibley to use in a documentary about his life called Faith of an Observer.

Alex Nibley later compiled Hugh's World War II memories in Sargeant Nibley, PhD, which was published in 2006.

Hugh Nibley gave the materials for his final book to FARMS in the fall of 2002, which was published in March 2010 as commemoration for what would have been his 100th birthday.

Hugh Nibley's obituary reported that he was fluent in 14 languages.

In 2021, the Interpreter Foundation and Eborn books published Hugh Nibley Observed, which collected the speeches given at the 2010 commemoration of Nibley's centennial as well as tributes and Nibley folklore.

Hugh Nibley was a Mormon folk legend during his lifetime, and frequently members of the LDS Church told fantastic stories about him.

Hugh Nibley's parents separated after they lost most of their money and had to sell their mansion in 1941.

Phyllis said that while Hugh Nibley enjoyed spending time with his children when they were young, he became distant as they got older.

Hugh Nibley died on February 24,2005, in his home in Provo, Utah, at the age of 94.

Hugh Nibley had long been aware of the allegations, and denied them.

Beck's seven siblings responded, noting about half the Hugh Nibley siblings had left the LDS church or were not active in Mormonism and most had taken issue with elements of their father's personality or habits but were unified in their rejection of Beck's claims.