More from Klaus Baer on Hugh Nibley

Thanks again to Noel Hausler for providing these very interesting letters. Notice that Baer here clarifies his comments from the last letter I posted. Someone commented that it sounded like Baer was a little perturbed with Walters in that letter, but actually it was the Tanners he was annoyed with.

20 March 1972

Dear Reverend Walters,

Many thanks for your letter of March 14 and the copy of Nibley's article, which I found here upon returning from Toronto. Just one brief remark: Nibley cites and awful lot of scholarly literature, but it seems noteworthy that certain recent publications that just possibly might have a closer bearing on the subject under discussion are ignored. Also no acknowledgement on p. 173; to my knowledge it wasn't Nibley who discovered the original location of the mismounted fragments. But then, as I have said before, most of what is being written is religious apologetics, which usually has different standards than one would expect in scholarly work.

In regard to quotations from letters: most of the citations from unnamed Egyptologists on p. 135 of THE CASE AGAINST MORMONISM, vol. I [by Jerald and Sandra Tanner] come from letters I wrote -- cf. e.g. the top of p. 2 of my letter to you written September 2, 1967. Even though the Egyptologist is anonymous (and few people that know me personally are likely to see the book), I think you will admit that the page in question was something of a shock to me. Things would have been worded very differently if I had at that time anticipated publication. But this is past history.

In any event, I have said what I had to say in regard to the papyri, and am just as happy I don't have to follow the twists and turns that the LDS argument seems to be taking. I must admit that I wonder how some of the more learned early Mormons would have reacted on being told that their religion was closer to gnosticism than Christianity. But then, if Nibley can find religious comfort in the endless reams of boring rubbish that the Coptic Gnostic texts tend to consist of (I am not interested in Gnosticism, obviously), more power to him.

Sincerely,
Klaus Baer