Don E. Norton

Great resource for teasing out how the English language is most effectively used and how to deal rationally with grammar and usage rules.

Dr. Nibley's approach to the history, scriptures and teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints is always fascinating and challenging. This was no exception. I learned a lot about Brigham's life and teachings, and found I had to revise my earlier views on the man. Recommended.

This morning [March 2, 2014] we went to the Gilbert Temple Dedication. I came home with lots of thoughts running through my head. After pondering for a few minutes, I decided to begin reading the book Temple and Cosmos, one of the volumes of the collected works of Hugh Nibley.

The first chapter was fascinating. The first four chapters are on temples. The balance, and majority of the book is on Cosmos.

"In 1816, the apocrypha were outlawed by the American Bible Society (which had great show more influence). So they came to have no prestige, were not read, were not know at all. They were not published in this country; little was known about them. The apocrypha sank to their lowest level in 1945, when H. H. Rowley, the last surviving person to study the apocrypha said, 'We'll just close the door now and forget about these. Nobody's reading them anymore. It is so.' And then, bingo, next year the whole thing broke loose again, and everyone was embarrassed, because no one knew anything about apocrypha. The new discoveries caught them completely off guard. (Page 258-259)

"The way these writings talk about these matters is extremely interesting it certainly beats science fiction. ... Since the ideas are nothing but conscious or unconscious plagiarism of biblical and apocryphal ideas ... why do these works have so much greater appeal than the originals? Because the originals, as they are given in the Bible and the apocrypha, have been systematically denatured. ... science fiction - 'folk scripture' - has taken the place of real scripture. (Page 275-276) The science fiction chapter is quite a bit later in the book.

"A wonderful passage from Socrates says, 'When I was a kid and went to school, science knew all the answers' ... "Plutarch talks about the same thing. He says the new physics taught people 'to despise all the superstitious fears which the awe-inspiring signs in the heavens arouse in the minds of those who are ignorant of the real cause of things.' (Page 516) And on and on it goes, with the 20th and 21st century getting the same anti-god rhetoric as millennium ago. The conflict between good and evil has not changed, and will continue. show less

Changed the way I think about the purpose of life, particularly with respect to how to achieve it.