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Bookstore Home > History > Biographies
Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life
As one of the LDS Church's most widely recognized scholars, Hugh Nibley (27 Mar 1910-25 Feb 2005) is both an icon and an enigma. Through complete access to Nibley's correspondence, journals, notes, and papers, Petersen has painted a portrait that reveals the man behind the legend. Starting with a foreword written by Zina Nibley Petersen (the author's wife and Nibley's daughter) and finishing with appendices that include some of the best of Nibley's personal correspondence, the biography reveals aspects of the tapestry of the life of one who has truly consecrated himself to the service of the Lord during his 94 year long life. Review Excerpts: Rating in The FARMS Review, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2004): *** Enthusiastically recommended _____ "Early acclaim for Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life - Hugh Nibley is generally touted as one of MormonismÆs greatest minds and perhaps its most prolific scholarly apologist. Just as hefty as some of NibleyÆs largest tomes, this authorized biography is delightfully accessible and full of the scholarÆs delicious wordplay and wit, not to mention some astonishing war stories and insights into NibleyÆs phenomenal acquisition of languages. Introduced by a personable foreword from the authorÆs wife (who is NibleyÆs daughter), the book is written with enthusiasm, respect and insight. It is organized into chapters alternating between chronological biography (childhood, mission to Germany, military service in WWII, ect.) and topical themes in NibleyÆs life (social criticism, faith, scholarship, Scripture and so on). A particularly powerful and timely chapter addresses NibleyÆs rather surprising views on war; he was opposed to the Vietnam War when it was very unpopular in LDS culture to do so. Although this format often results in repeated information, it also makes it easy to approach the book as a collection of stand-alone essays. Occasionally the author falls into the archival researcherÆs trap of including unnecessary information simply because he has access to it, but on the whole Petersen is a careful scholar who provides helpful historical context. Although Petersen married into NibleyÆs family, and sometimes defends Nibley and his inconsistencies from his many critics, this project is far from hagiography. It fills an important gap in LDS history and will appeal to a wide Mormon audience." --Publishers Weekly Dec. 23rd, 2002 Pg. 65 _____ "Imagine how hard it would be to write a biography about your own father-in-law -- who is still alive, and whose wife and children (including your spouse) are extremely opinionated and outspoken and brilliant and prone to criticize. To me, that sounds like as good a description of one of the circles of hell as you can find this side of Dante. But that's what Boyd Jay Petersen set out to do with his book Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life. What Petersen achieves in this book is to let us see that brilliance does not make one whit of difference in a man's struggle for religious faith and for personal happiness." --Orson Scott Card _____ "This is one of the most satisfying biographies I have read in a long time. ... Petersen, Nibley's _____ "Boyd Petersen's prize winning biography of his famous, though enigmatic father-in-law provides a wealth of welcome insight and information for LDS and non-LDS readers alike, who may be intrigued by this giant of the twentieth-century intellectual scene in Utah. Through fourteen years of Though a self-proclaimed devotee of Nibley, Peterson has done an admirable job of establishing an objective and external perspective from which to relate his story. He protects well the comfort of both his readers and his Perhaps most important, Peterson's well documented account of Nibley's full life and education go a long way to help us understand this impish paragon of learning about the ancient world. While his family recognized and With extensive detail, Peterson shows how Hugh Nibley grounded his profound faith in a wealth of spiritual experiences ranging from daily spiritual promptings to profound encounters with the divine and the spiritual world. Clearly formative was his life-after-life experience as a college student undergoing an appendectomy. It had come at a questioning time in his life, and 'permanently reoriented' his life, giving him an unshakable faith in the Nibley rose to prominence as a scholar defending the faith during the middle years of the twentieth century when skepticism among LDS academics reached its highest point. Indeed, the virtual disappearance of sceptical enclaves While most observers will remember Nibley first for his role as a defender of the faith, Peterson wants to claim that his 'most significant contribution has been to establish a Mormon theological foundation for We should thank Boyd Peterson for providing this richly informative view into the amazing life of a most unusual and impressive person. Nibley's example will be used to inspire and instruct for decades to come, and _____ Boyd Petersen, Hugh Nibley's biographer, is also his son-in-law. And he's my friend. This past August, I e-mailed Boyd, asking for some help on an assignment I was preparing for my freshman writing class at BYU. I wanted to send my students on a sort of footnote scavenger hunt in the Harold B. Lee Library. Their job would be to take a few well-annotated pages from any book and check the actual sources to see how the book's author had used or abused those sources. Could he recommend any books or articles? Boyd wrote back, "I have a couple of suggestions. One, [Hugh's] talk 'Leaders to Managers: The Fatal Shift' has a couple of misrepresented quotes in it from Brigham Young." Boyd has always spoken his mind, but his suggestion surprised me. I'd heard that Nibley sometimes got it wrong, but I never expected to hear it from his son-in-law. Nevertheless, I checked the quotes against the Journal of Discourses, the original source, and sure enough, Boyd was right: His father-in-law got it wrong--at least that time. Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life, on the other hand, got it right. No hagiography, Nibley's authorized biography is a balanced and thoroughly engrossing tale of Mormonism's gadfly scholar by someone willing to rummage though the closets without losing sight of the spectacular view. Take those Brigham Young quotes, for example. Petersen's book explains how errors like that could creep in. According to Gordon Thomasson, Nibley's graduate research assistant, they were once in the "cage" of the Church Historian's office studying the original volumes of Brigham Young's manuscript, filling out a 3x5 note card anytime they found something interesting. To avoid the possibility that A. William Lund, senior assistant church historian, might confiscate any of their notes, Nibley asked Thomasson to take "accurate but indecipherable word for word notes." Thomasson, in turn, suggested that they use the "Spanish equivalents for English words but writing them using the Greek alphabet." As Petersen explains, that was fine with Hugh because he had "always done his own notes in Gregg shorthand, with assorted Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, or Egyptian notes thrown in." Once again, Petersen balances the account: Lund was only doing his job. Quoting Thomasson, "No one else was going to embarrass the Church by exploiting the Historian's office as Fawn Brodie had done, if Lund had anything to do with it . . . Neither of us enjoyed the subterfuge. That was simply a reality of working there." If you're a Nibliophile like I am, you've been waiting for this book ever since you read his short autobiographical essay, "An Intellectual Autobiography," published in 1978. Who is this man behind all these essays and books--half text, half footnotes? What's the real story behind the briefcase he acquired during World War II? Did he really ask Phyllis to marry him the first time he met her? And most importantly, is the private man any different from the public one? The answers to the last two questions are no and no. You'll have to read the book to answer the first two. Organized in alternating chronological and topical chapters, Petersen's book covers Nibley's life and contributions, starting in 1810 in Scotland with Hugh's great-grand parents, James and Jean Nibley and ending with Nibley finally turning over chapters of his last baby, One Eternal Round, to his editor. (Until recently, this 92-year-old scholar and defender of his faith put in three to four hours in his office each weekday.) The book's topical chapters cover Nibley's roles as social critic, naturalist, and educator. They tell of his faith and his defense of The Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price. They reveal a man as opposed to war and as he is in love with the Temple. Petersen drew extensively on interviews, private correspondence, journals, and other never-before published materials, in addition to Nibley's large corpus of published writings, to tell the story of this extraordinary man. We read from a letter from Klaus Baer to the Tanners that Nibley's "articles in [the Improvement Era on the Book of Abraham] hit very close to home if you know something about the field." We learn from a letter from Spencer W. Kimball to his wife, Camille, that "we are fortunate to have such men of his scholarly attainments and sweet faith in our University." But best of all, we discover from his correspondence with his son Alex that this very public defender of his faith also bore frequent testimony of its truthfulness in private. For example, quoting Brigham Young, he writes Alex, "'Tell the Saints to get the Spirit of the Lord,' and 'Don't be in a hurry.' On the few occasions when I have been willing to take that advice seriously I have flourished like the green bay tree--the rest of the time has been a struggle, and no need for it." This man is not the conflicted scholar some have maintained, a man playing mind games with the faithful even as he fought battles in his own mind over his own faith. This man believed what he wrote and wrote what he believed. Well written and thoroughly researched, Petersen's biography is a must have for anyone struggling to reconcile faith and reason. For Nibliophiles, it should stand at the top of their wish list. (By the way, the book's forward written by Nibley's daughter and Boyd's wife, Zina Nibley Petersen, is alone worth the price of the book. Among the many vignettes of Nibley family life she relates is the one where she remembers--in high school-calling herself a "daughter of a false god," in reference to her father's fawning groupies. "I think this is funny," she continues. "I think if I told it to the groupies sitting at Daddy's knees they would not get it.") I think I got it." --Greg Taggart, Association for Mormon Letters (AML) _____ Boyd Petersen served an LDS mission to France-Paris, where he learned French and knocked on several thousand doors. He attended BYU, where he met Zina, fell for her, and finally convinced her to marry him. After trying out several majors, he eventually graduated with a degree in French and International Relations. Hopeless idealists, he and Zina later moved to Washington, where Boyd worked for the U.S. Congress for eight years (House, Senate, and Congressional Research Service) until he realized he wasn't Jed Bartlett. To compensate, he completed a Master's degree in Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland. He and Zina now live in Provo with their four children. Boyd currently teaches at both BYU and UVSC and is a PhD student at the University of Utah. He is a Gospel Doctrine and Priesthood Quorum instructor in his ward. Title: Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life Retail Price: Your Price: Only $27.95
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Boyd Jay Petersen; Zina Nibley Petersen (Foreword), Draper, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2002, 8.5x10" hardbound, 446 pages