robert millet

Hugh Nibley Weekly Lecture Series Beginning Tonight at BYU

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Dr. Richard Bushman

The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies and the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), in conjunction with Religious Education and the Harold B. Lee library, are hosting a weekly lecture series that begins tonight, January 14th, 2010, at 7:00pm, and extends through Winter Semester 2010 on Thursday evenings in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium at BYU.

This lecture series is in honor of the 100th anniversary of Hugh Nibley’s birth this year.  Hugh Nibley was born on March 27, 1910.

The presenters at these lectures will include Richard Bushman, Robert Millet, Terry Ball, Daniel Peterson, Zina Petersen, Ann Madsen, Alex Nibley, Bert Wilson, John Welch, Marilyn Arnold, Eric Huntsman, and Gaballa Ali Gaballa.

Tonight’s lecture is by Richard Bushman, biographer of Joseph Smith (Rough Stone Rolling), and an editor of the Joseph Smith Papers Project.  His topic is “Nibley and Joseph Smith.”  Next week’s lecture, January 21st, will be by Robert Millet who will present on “Nibley and the Church.”

I’m looking forward to these lectures.  Hugh Nibley catapulted LDS scholarship and apologetics into a new dimension, and his work will affect many generations of Latter-day Saints to come.  His work on the temple has particularly influenced me, and many others I know.

Update 1/15/10: The lecture was wonderful last night.  And there’s good news!  There were three cameras there filming it, which I think they will continue for the series, which means that they are planning on putting it all on TV or making it available somehow for later viewing (perhaps online).  They also gave the rest of the series schedule of lectures:

  • 14 Jan – “Nibley and Joseph Smith” – Richard Bushman
  • 21 Jan – “Nibley and the Church” – Robert Millet
  • 28 Jan – “Nibley’s Early Education” – Zina Petersen
  • 4 Feb – “Nibley as Apologist” – Daniel Peterson
  • 11 Feb – “Nibley and the environment” – Terry Ball
  • 18 Feb – “Graduate School through BYU” – Alex Nibley
  • 25 Feb – “Nibley on the Bible” – Ann Madsen
  • 4 Mar – “Folklore on Nibley” – Bert Wilson
  • 11 Mar – “The Lasting Legacies of Hugh W. Nibley” – John W. Welch
  • 18 Mar – “Nibley and Classical Scholarship” – Eric Huntsman
  • 25 Mar – “Nibley on the Book of Mormon” – Marilyn Arnold
  • 1 Apr – “Nibley the Mentor” – Wilfred Griggs
  • 8 Apr – “Nibley, Egyptology & the Book of Abraham” – TBA

These lectures will all be held in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium (Level 1) at 7:00pm.  This is a great lineup!  If you plan on coming to these lectures, make sure you come early to get a seat, as the room was filled to overflowing last night.

Our Daily Focus Should be Eternal

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The temple is like a great lens. It’s a reflector and a magnifier, a redirector and a viewer. Many have said how attending the temple allows us to leave the world around us and enter a different sphere. It is a place where time and fashion disappear. It is the nearest to God that we can come on earth, but how much nearer can you come when you are in His house?

As such, the temple allows us to redirect our attention and refocus our lives on those things that really matter. If we attend the temple often enough, the things we learn there will spill over into our daily comings and goings.

Sometimes we get too caught up in the world to notice those things that are the most worthwhile. We get so preoccupied by satisfying the world that we forget that we ultimately need to satisfy God. In the October 2000 Conference, Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught,

Maxwell

Elder Neal A. Maxwell

Many individuals preoccupied by the cares of the world are not necessarily in transgression. But they certainly are in diversion and thus waste “the days of [their] probation” (2 Ne. 9:27). Yet some proudly live “without God in the world” (Alma 41:11), with gates and doors locked from the inside! . . . Let us adopt the attitude recommended by President Brigham Young: “Say to the fields, . . . flocks, . . . herds, . . . gold, . . . silver, . . . goods, . . . chattels, . . . tenements, . . . possessions, and to all the world, stand aside; get away from my thoughts, for I am going up to worship the Lord” (Deseret News, 5 Jan. 1854, 2). There are so many ways to say to the world, “stand aside.” (“The Tugs and Pulls of the World“)

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