I should say, as a disclaimer, that Baer requested that Walters check with him before publishing or quoting from the letter. Since all the persons involved in this exchange are deceased, I hope I can be forgiven for disrespecting his wishes in this regard.
There have been only a few published critiques of Nibley's "Egyptian endowment" apologetic, so I think Baer's specific criticisms of that apologetic are important. The letter also illustrates that although Baer was Nibley's mentor and quite irenic toward the Church, this should not be construed as support for or acquiescence to Nibley's views.
Note: Brackets have been used in the transcription in place of angle brackets, because angle brackets confuse Blogger.
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28 February 1972
Rev. Wesley P. Walters
Marissa United Presbyterian Church
Marissa, Illinois 62257
Dear Reverend Walters:
A quick answer to your letter of February 24, which just arrived. I must admit that I haven't been keeping up with the flood of LDS publication on the topic of the so-called "Book of Breathings" that has appeared since my article in DIALOGUE. Much of it seems to be ofuscatory in the extreme, tending to pick on asides, quotes out of context, and opinions emitted by the large penumbra of semi-scholarly types (and crackpots) that hang around the fringes of Egyptology -- and are, of course, much attracted by such things as the Book of the Dead.
Among the latter, I would include those that want to see in the Book of the Dead a manual of initiation. That the Book of the Dead has ritual significance in connection with funeral services -- and that a great deal more can be pulled out of it than has been in regard to ancient Egyptian cosmological and theological views -- has, of course, nothing to do with the point under consideration.
Just to go over the references in the two pages of Nibley's articles that you sent me:
{a} Thausing in Melanges Mapero and elsewhere: Prof. Thausing is the professor of Egyptology at Vienna, but her views on Egyptian religion are not exactly in the mainstream of Egyptian thought. If you are interested, may I suggest, e.g., checking the passage in Mel. Masp. I, 40 and seeing whether the texts there cited sound to someone who comes to the question without preconceptions as though they had anything to do with the initiation of a hierophant. They don't to me.
{b} Bleeker, Initiation is not handy at the moment.
{c} Bleeker, Egyptian Festivals, p. 45 discusses the Osiris Mystery plays (i.e, in the medieval Christian sense). How about this quote from the page: "there never was a secret doctrine in Ancient Egypt; there were no closed societies of priests and initiates who possessed esoteric knowledge. In popular writings this view is sometimes advanced with much display of pseudo-scholarship ..."
{d} The Brandon quote on this page (p. 168): ["]It is not a self-evident leap from the fact that the dead had to go through tests to be admitted to the life in the Netherworld to the existence of initiation in the here and now.["] Brandon doesn't make the leap, though Nibley implies [that he does].
{e} My copy of Bergman, Ich bin Isis, hasn't arrived yet, but the book in general deals with the Greek Isis cult.
{f} ZAS 57, p. 11: The passage in question (I am quoting from the more recent edition of the Egyptian text, de Buck, Coffin Texts II, pp. 226 ff): "TO KNOW THE SPIRITS OF HELIOPOLIS. TO KNOW WHAT THOTH KNOWS AND KEEPS TO HIMSELF FOREVER. TO KNOW EVERY TEMPLE. TO BE EFFECTIVE ON EARTH AND IN THE NECROPOLIS. TO ENTER AMONG THE LORDS OF HELIOPOLIS. TO GO FORTH TO HEAVEN AND TO PENETRATE THE NETHERWORLD BY A LIVING OR DEAD SPIRIT." This is the title; most copies only have the first phrase. The text continues: "I know the spirits of Heliopolis. I have becom great among the great ones; I have come into being among those who have come into being, who see clearly in regard to his one eye (i.e. the injured eye of Horus). Open (the way) for me that I may restore the damaged eyes, for I am one of them. I KNOW THE ENNEAD OF HELIOPOLIS, INTO WHICH EVEN THE GREAT OF SEERS (the high priest of Heliopolis) HAS NOT BEEN INITIATED ..." The point here is that the deceased claims to have secret knowledge that only the gods have and in shared not even by the high priest -- which points to anything but initiations of living persons into secret knowledge on earth.
{g} The references in Munro etc. in n. 150 deal with the need for intensive study of the ordinary rituals -- say nothing about mystic initiations.
This should, I believe make my point clear. The article in question is an exercise in LDS apologetics, which has to be judged, like all apologetics, in the light of faith.
To come back to the question in your second paragraph: I see no need for major changes in my treatment of the st n snsn text. How you want to mention it in your own paper is another question. Perhaps I am not the best person to ask whether "my article still presents generally accepted conclusions" or not, though obviously I think it does.
At the moment, I wouldn't even want to propose minor changes. I've been working on other things in recent years and don't have the material at my fingertips at the moment.
One minor matter: I would appreciate your checking with me before quoting me in your article. Far too many of my letters (including some to you) have appeared in print without any sort of advance warning. Not all were written under the assumption that they would be published; and I think that you will understand that you will find it difficult to get cooperation if people feel that they have to send you publishable manuscripts instead of letters.
Hope that this is of some help.
Sincerely yours,
Klaus Baer
Professor of Egyptology
9 comments:
This is about par for the course when it comes to Mormon critics talking about the current status of Egyptology: citing a four-decade old personal correspondence from an Egyptologist who was respected in his day, but whose work has been rendered progressively obsolete in the past several years--much like what Robert Ritner is now experiencing in the twilight of his career. But why bother keeping up with the latest developments in Egyptology when it's so much easier to score rhetorical points with obsolete opinions from dead scholars? In the meantime, Nibley's views concerning the meaning and use of Egyptian temple liturgy continue to be vindicated--here a little and there a little--while Baer (who, to his credit, was a genuinely nice guy who didn't go out of his way to bash Nibley or Mormonism) is quickly becoming the late 20th century's version of E. A. Wallis Budge: a scholar whose work, in his day, may have represented the "cutting edge," but which has long since been superseded by the ongoing march of what is still quite a nascent field of study.
By the way, did you catch John Gee's presentations at the annual conference of The Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities at the University of Ontario? He delivered one paper entitled The Book of the Dead as Canon and another entitled, interestingly enough, Abraham in Egypt.
Hey William,
It figures that you would be so uninterested in any criticism of Nibley that you wouldn't even want me to post it. Much better to brush it under the rug and discredit the author, while simultaneously appealing to conference presentations whose content you may or may not actually be privy to. Perhaps it would be more constructive to post your specific objections to Baer's critique instead of generalizing about who you expect to become "obsolete" as a result of Gee's latest fireside?
-Chris
Good stuff as usual, Chris. Hope your research in SLC is going well.
Interesting post Chris :-)
I don't have time to read the post, but thought I'd drop in to say Wesley Walters was a sad fellow.
Wesley Walters may have been a bit overzealous, but "sad"??
Hodges comment was interesting. Years ago I started subscribing to Dialogue. I asked an American couple did they know anything about the GAs atitude towards the journal. They repled that some GA was upset with a paper by a Presbyterian pastor (Walters) and the response given by the LDS historian (Bushman). It was not very good (Bushman's paper) Walters pointed out years later when Milton Backman wrote his book on the first vision, he made mention of Walter's paper. Interesting. In RSR page 570 no mention of the Dialogue article and Bushman writes "The rebuttal is in Backman, First Vision 53-111). Does he mention Walter's paper?
Chris,
That's definitely an interesting letter. One might note that Baer seems a little perturbed with Walters as well.
I am a bit dismayed with Schryver's comment about Baer (I'm living two blocks from his Egyptology library, so I'm biased). I would be shocked if you could find non-BYU Egyptologists who consider Ritner obsolete. Perhaps he should check his CV.
In fairness, however, l might suggest that Baer's comments about pseudo-scholarship are probably not directed at Nibley. Yes, he find's Nibley's arguments unlikely and his motivations dubious (as well he should), but as far as I know, Baer retained a certain good-natured relationship with Nibley: it doesn't seem like his style to bash Nibs as pseudo-scholar. Nibley is obviously well-versed in the field--he just ignores whatever doesn't agree with him.
Hi Ben,
You're right about Walters and Ritner, and I partially agree with you about Nibley. Yes, Baer and Nibley were friends, and no, Baer did not explicitly target Nibley with his "crackpot" remark. You're right that bashing Nibley wasn't Baer's style. Not only did he not want to damage their friendship, but he also seems to have given religion and pretty wide berth and to have viewed apologetics as harmless if misguided.
But since Nibley was the subject of the letter, I think we do have to see the sentence about crackpots as a reflection on his work. At the very least, Baer is saying that Nibley cites a lot of crackpots as authorities in making his argument. And I think it should be pretty clear that Nibley's work is among those that Baer saw as "obfuscatory in the extreme". But more than that, Nibley was one of the people who saw in the Book of Breathings an initiation manual. So when Baer says that such people are crackpots, he is implicitly applying the label to Nibley as well. Not to mention the fact that Baer's criticisms of Nibley's footnotes indicate a deficiency not only in the sources themselves but also in Nibley's reading of them.
Anyway, my point is that while Baer wasn't the type to bash Nibley explicitly, I do think there's quite a strongly critical undercurrent here. Certainly Baer doesn't seem to have anything nice to say about the "Egyptian endowment" apologetic.
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