I was doing some research online today, prompted in part by my last conversation with my brother-in-law Darrin, and I came across some interesting references.
Five years ago, Hugh Nibley was in failing health. Nibley is personally interesting both because he played such an important role in development of church studies at BYU and elsewhere, and because of his link to our common ancestor, Alexander Neibaur, who was rather prominent in church history contmporary with Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other early church leaders during the Nauvoo era.
Nibley was an important figure in his own right, having established a well-respected discipline of LDS church-related studies and interests, stemming from all kinds of distant fields like archaeology, cultural anthropology, ancient languages and linguistics, ancient and modern religion culture and practices, through every conceivable connection, some cabinet curiosity-types, and some very meaningful parallels. Nibleyś work was unorthodox and disturbing to many more conventional academic types, too frenetic and frenzied and altogether too religious for the staid school of agnostic scholastic professors, and too complex for most Mormons to understand the big words. He challenged us every step of the way. A brilliant, dynamic man, driven to heights not oft achieved in LDS academic circles.
The thing that struck me was one facet of Nibley and his personal life, if we might presume to know something about that. It seems that, as Nibley lay in failing health, one of his daughters claimed to be recovering memories from her childhood of ritual sexual abuse. She had supposedly repressed these traumatic memories for, until later with the assistance of her professional psychiatrist spouse, she was able to coax from her reluctant mind these long-buried ugly family secrets. Martha Beck talks about her discovery and gradual evolution of the case in a sensational book, Leaving the Saints The Deseret News article reviews the book here.
Martha is as accomplished as Hugh at spinning stories, but unfortunately not as good at maintaining an even keel. Whether or not she is telling an honest story, you judge for yourself -- chances are, you can check the book out at the local public library. I found it to be internally flawed and substantially over dramatized, at least in the parts I have personal understanding of. All in all, I judged that the story did a great deal more to discredit and invalidate Beck than it did to hurt Hugh Nibley, the church, or BYU.
But that was my impression. You must draw your own conclusions.
