Okay, here are my notes from the second and last session of the Latter-day Saints and the Bible unit, which took place on Tuesday, 23 November 2010 at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta. This session was also meant to focus on the legacy left by the late BYU professor Hugh W. Nibley.
John Hall, BYU professor of Classics and Ancient History presided at this session.
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David J. Larsen, PhD student at the University of St Andrews
This is me. As I didn’t take notes during my own paper, I don’t have any to post here. I would post my whole paper, but I am currently trying to clean it up a bit for interested parties who have asked to see it. I will share here the abstract that I submitted to the committee to be selected to present at this session.
Hugh Nibley and the New Year Festival
One of the key features of the late Hugh W. Nibley’s scholarship was his research on and use of the hypothetical annual enthronement festival suggested by scholars to have been celebrated in the ancient Near East (including ancient Israel) annually at the Autumn New Year. Nibley built on the work of some of the major proponents of this theory in the early 20th century, including Sigmund Mowinckel, Aubrey Johnson, and S.H. Hooke (of the “Myth and Ritual School”). Nibley adopted the principles of cultic ritual outlined in the Ancient Near Eastern “patternism” of the time and applied them to many societies, including, ultimately, to cultural/religious gatherings attested in the Book of Mormon. He suggested at one time that, in his opinion, the rituals of the New Year were “the most convincing evidence yet brought forth for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.”[1] Nibley even suggested that this pattern of ritual preserved in numerous ancient societies may be a prototype, as well, for the great gathering at Adam-ondi-Ahman in the last days.[2]
Nibley’s work on the New Year Festival has greatly inspired succeeding generations of LDS students and scholars, leading many to do further research on the topic, both in its ancient settings in the Old World, and in relation to our understanding of the Book of Mormon. Some of these scholars include John Welch, John Tvedtnes, Stephen Ricks, and many others. Their valuable contributions to LDS scholarship on this subject have been based on the assumption that arguments for the annual New Year Festival are valid.
I propose to address the status quaestionis of the suggested New Year Festival in ancient Israel. To what extent is it reasonable to use this theory as a basis for argumentation? In the last few decades, biblical scholarship has largely distanced itself from the conclusions of the “Myth and Ritual School” and condemned ideas of a universal pattern of ritual across ancient cultures. However, a number of scholars, including John Day, Margaret Barker, J.J.M. Roberts, and Patrick D. Miller, have recently argued in favor of the validity of the general theory. I will explore what is being said about the New Year Festival in today’s scholarship, and will present an evaluation of Nibley’s work on the subject in light of this analysis.
[1] Hugh Nibley,
An Approach to the Book of Mormon, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1964), 295.
[2] Hugh Nibley, The Ancient State: The Rulers and the Ruled, edited by Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks (Salt Lake City and Provo: Deseret Book Co., Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1991), 100.
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Heavenly Ascents 