Bill Hamblin Has Passed Away

[smac97]

Here:

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I’m shocked and in deep sorrow.  My long-time friend and colleague Bill Hamblin passed away suddenly earlier today.  I don’t know any details; I’ve only just now confirmed the truth of the report.  It sounds like a heart attack, but I don’t know.

I first met Bill when he and I were both studying in Cairo.  I was already there; he came over for a year at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA), something of a finishing school for Arabists that was housed at the American University in Cairo, where I was enrolled as a student of Middle Eastern history.  My wife already knew him slightly from undergraduate days at BYU, where she had been a theater major and he, a history major, had appeared in one or two plays.

My wife and I and Bill and his wife Loree spent a lot of time together, exploring the wonders of pharaonic, classical, early Christian, and medieval Islamic Egypt.

He returned to the University of Michigan for his Ph.D. in Near Eastern history.  I eventually ended up (after myself doing the CASA “finishing school”) at the University of California at Los Angeles, and then took a job at BYU.  Bill began working at the Department of Defense and moved thereafter to the University of Southern Mississippi.
...
We were colleagues at the University for many years, and for several of those years we served together on the board of the old Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS).  We co-authored several articles together, and even envisioned a jointly authored book on celestial ascents around the world.

For the past eight (?) years or so, we’ve co-written a bi-weekly column on world religions for the Deseret News.

Bill’s learning was prodigious, but what I most admired about him, intellectually speaking, was his fresh way of seeing things.  I always learned from him.  And he was funny.

In the wake of what I’ve called the Purge at the Maxwell Institute in 2012, Bill’s was one of the most forceful voices for the establishment of a new organization to pick up the torch of apologetics and explicitly faithful scholarship.  He was a vitally important co-founder of the Interpreter Foundation, present at the creation — that is to say, one of those who met for lunch at the Olive Garden Restaurant to discuss whether we should try to launch a new foundation.  He contributed our second article, and he was energetically involved in getting us underway.

I very much enjoy his writings, his contributions to scholarship about the Church, and his defense of the Restored Gospel.

My condolences to his family. 

Thanks,

-Smac

[Kevin Christensen]

Sad to hear that.  He will be missed.  He wrote many important articles and books that I still refer to.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/do/search/?q=WIlliam J. Hamblin&start=25&context=5485626&facet=#query-results

This one, on different approaches to the Book of Mormon remains important and insightful.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol2/iss1/11/

Back in 1999, when I had decided to write what became my FARMS Occasional Paper on Margaret Barker, he became my editor.  He put a half-dozen or so pointed comments on the first version I sent him in 2000, and that sent me to work for another year, working to resolve the issues he had raised.  I had lunch with him once in 2003 during the time I came to BYU during Barker's first visit.  I found him engaging and insightful.  I enjoyed his contributions to various online columns, posts at ZLMB and here, as well as his perceptive analysis of what happened with the regime change at Maxwell Institute.  As I recall, he compared it to a University deciding to change an athletic program from Football to soccer, without consulting the fans, athletes, coaches and donors on grounds that football is too violent.  He reported on the ongoing pressure during his career at BYU to not do apologetic, reporting its real effect on his salary and promotions.  In response, a few years back announced that he was going to drop apologetic writing so as to better provide for his family.  He posted an entertaining conversation with Barker on YouTube, made during a shared meal at the Eagle and Egg, a favorite haunt of C.S. Lewis.  Some years back, I responded to his Vindicating Josiah essay at Interpreter.   It was Hamblin that invited me to join with Interpreter when he was scaling back his own involvement.  I occasionally read his Deseret News articles with Daniel Peterson.  He was notably pleased at being a grandfather.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[JamesBYoung]

Hamblin, William J.

 

 

William James Hamblin was a Mormon apologist and professor of history at Brigham Young University when this was written. He is a former board member of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at BYU. Brother Hamblin received his bachelors degree in history from BYU. He did his graduate studies from the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A. in history in 1981, an MA in Near East Studies in 1984, and a PhD in history in 1985. The title of his Dissertation was The Fatimid Army During the Early Crusades. Prior to joining the faculty of BYU in 1989, Brother Hamblin was a history professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, an instructor at Campbell University and a middle east intelligence analyst for the United States Department of Defense. Brother Hamblin contributed many articles to The International Military Encyclopedia.Brother Hamblin lives in Provo, Utah with his wife, Loree. They have three children.

 

https://rsc.byu.edu/authors/hamblin-william-j

[Anakin7]

I will miss him.

[Bob Crockett]

An important, solid, voice in support of the Church.  

[Ahab]

36 minutes ago, JamesBYoung said:

Hamblin, William J.

 

 

William James Hamblin was a Mormon apologist and professor of history at Brigham Young University when this was written. He is a former board member of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies at BYU. Brother Hamblin received his bachelors degree in history from BYU. He did his graduate studies from the University of Michigan, receiving an M.A. in history in 1981, an MA in Near East Studies in 1984, and a PhD in history in 1985. The title of his Dissertation was The Fatimid Army During the Early Crusades. Prior to joining the faculty of BYU in 1989, Brother Hamblin was a history professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, an instructor at Campbell University and a middle east intelligence analyst for the United States Department of Defense. Brother Hamblin contributed many articles to The International Military Encyclopedia.Brother Hamblin lives in Provo, Utah with his wife, Loree. They have three children.

 

https://rsc.byu.edu/authors/hamblin-william-j

Wow, he looks a lot like me as I am now.  If people saw us together they might even think we are brothers. I've read some of his work and I think he made a lot of intelligent comments.  Maybe I'll get to know him better later.  Or maybe I knew him before I came here and just can't remember that now.  It's very sad to us sometimes when someone we love passes beyond the veil before we do but I think we all know enough about the gospel to know he is in a good place.  I don't know if I will but I'm sure a lot of his family will see him again someday.

[Scott Lloyd]

Along with his friend and colleague, Dr. Peterson, William Hamblin was a fearless and formidable defender of the faith of the Latter-day Saints. In the wake of the deplorable purging at the Maxwell Institute, he was instrumental in the founding of the Interpreter Foundation. That is now part of his legacy. 
 

Even so, we are the poorer for having lost him. 

Edited December 12, 2019 by Scott Lloyd

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

😥

[sheilauk]

I am sorry to learn of Prof Hamblin's passing.  I enjoyed his articles.  My condolences to his family and friends.

[Amulek]

When I first read that Bill had passed away, I was more than a little shocked, and definitely saddened once it sunk in. 

I had followed a good bit of his work over the years, and I always enjoyed both his insights and his writing style. 

I also really enjoyed his sense of humor. So, on a lighter note, I should probably lament that we'll now probably never get to see the production of the oft-joked about Bill and Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Anti-Mormon Zombie Hell. 

He will truly be missed. 

 

[JamesBYoung]

There was a definite need for cleansing the Institute of loose-cannon apologists in my opinion.

Sacking Dan with an email while he was on tour for the Institute was bad form, I think.

[Bob Crockett]

8 minutes ago, JamesBYoung said:

There was a definite need for cleansing the Institute of loose-cannon apologists in my opinion.

Sacking Dan with an email while he was on tour for the Institute was bad form, I think.

It didn't happen that way.  The director tried to meet with Dan to sack him; he wouldn't meet.  At least that seemed to be my recollection at the time.  Dan is in a much better place now.  Although I like Spencer, and have substantial doubt about the Maxwell Institute today, its purpose and future. 

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

he director tried to meet with Dan to sack him; he wouldn't meet. 

You may have that reversed from what I have heard....as in Dan and others were trying to meet with him to discuss obstacles to getting work done,etc.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Calm

[Daniel Peterson]

It is not true that the director vainly sought to meet with me in order to sack me.

It is not true that the director vainly sought to meet with me.  Period.

I met with him a couple of days before I left for six weeks overseas, in the Middle East and then in Europe.  I was not sacked in that meeting, and there was no expectation of another meeting before my departure.  I was sacked while I was still in the Middle East.  To be precise, I was sacked by email while I was in my room in the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem.

Just for the record.

 

[DonBradley]

My perspective on and experience of Bill is probably different from that of most here because at one time I was a critic of the church and sometimes engaged in argument with Bill over apologetics and Latter-day Saint truth claims.

I learned of his death tonight and was just reflecting over on another board, largely dominated by self-identified critics, on my experience with Bill. I used to have a pretty negative view of him, as I think critics mostly do. But a lot of experience changed that view. Here are the reflections on Bill I posted there.

Over a decade ago, when I was very active online in critiquing Latter-day Saint apologetics (and, to a lesser, extent truth claims), I made some posts criticizing the the NHM/Nahom find as evidence for the Book of Mormon. Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin both participated in the discussion. One of my arguments, it turned out, depended on assumptions about Semitic languages that were quite false.

I'd recently had a private conversation with Dan Peterson when I ran into him at the BYU library, and I think he knew from that conversation that I was quite sincere in my search for truth. Rather than simply trounce me in refuting the point I'd been trying to make in ignorance of Semitic languages, Dan and Bill both, in an evident spirit of helpfulness, provided further information about how Semitic languages actually work, explaining this "for non-Semiticists"--i.e., in this case, me.

A couple years later, in a transition that surprised no one more than it did me, I returned to the church. When I did, I was in no doubt that this was the right thing for me to do. I was also terrified. One of things I worried about was whether other members of the church would actually accept me. I had been pretty public in my criticisms across several years. And in my extensive digging into Mormon history I'd developed a lot of very novel and idiosyncratic views.

Not long after this, I arranged lunch with Dan Peterson and Bill Hamblin. I had new findings on the First Vision, part of what had triggered my return to the church, that I wanted to share. Dan wasn't able to stay very long that day, so I mostly laid out my findings to Bill. The primary context I used for the First Vision in that conversation was 19th century Freemasonry. For those who don't know, Bill Hamblin had built a reputation as the most strident critic of various claims that early Mormonism drew on esoteric traditions available in the 19th century. (See, for instance, his review of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View.) Yet it was exactly this kind of material that I was using to frame my analysis of the First Vision. I went into the conversation sweating bullets--would Bill Hamblin think my ideas were crazy, or, worse, apostate?

Bill loved what I laid out. He spent a few hours talking with me and exploring ideas. He had tons of ideas that he generously contributed, which I took copious notes on. He seemed to love exploring new ideas not only about this but also about various aspects of the Book of Mormon. To help my work, he promised me a copy of his new book on Solomon's temple, which he later gave me.

If I had worried about being accepted back into the church, and worried that the ideas I wanted to contribute were too "out there" for the supposedly ideologically conservative old guard of Mormon apologetics, Bill Hamblin helped lay all those fears to rest.

While Bill certainly earned his reputation for being dogged and even pugnacious in engaging critics, this was one, and it turns out one rather small, aspect of the man.

The column that Dan Peterson and Bill wrote about world religions demonstrates this in spades. One would be hard-pressed to find devout adherents to one religion who are as respectful, as generous, and as willing to see the divine in other religions as Dan and Bill were in those columns. Their outlook was quasi-universalist, and their respect and generosity extended "even" toward Islam, although it is a faith that tends to come in for strident rejection among believing Christians.

How do I reconcile that Bill Hamblin could be quite pugnacious with critics of Mormonism while also being pretty kind and helpful with this particular critic when I argued against the NHM evidence, and with his openness to new ideas and his universal respect for the faiths of others? When he could see that I was sincere in my seeking, that seemed to make all the difference in the world, even when I had come to very different conclusions from him and was criticizing his own truth claims. Having read his fiery polemics, that isn't what I would have expected, nor would have I expected his openness to my use of Freemasonry in understanding Mormonism, nor his obvious openness to other faiths.

Clearly, I had misunderstood the man.

In retrospect I have to wonder if part of what was going on was that, having given respect to the faiths of others, Bill Hamblin expected that same kind of respect for his faith from others.

That's not going to be the whole story. We human beings are complicated creatures, and Bill Hamblin was certainly no exception.

Yet, whatever quirks dominated my perception of Bill in my critic days, the facts that he could see beyond my criticisms ten-plus years ago to my fundamental sincerity, that he could be open to ideas I would have expected him to find wild, and that he overwhelmingly epitomized respect for others' faith, show a man many, many times bigger than the perceptions of his sometime sparring partners.

Don

Edited December 12, 2019 by DonBradley
Corrected grammatical errors

[katherine the great]

 Very sad and unexpected. 😢

[Scott Lloyd]

8 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

It didn't happen that way.  The director tried to meet with Dan to sack him; he wouldn't meet.  At least that seemed to be my recollection at the time.   

That’s a false recollection. 
 

Dan can clarify here if necessary, but the director met at length with Dan to discuss, among other things, his vision for the Mormon Studies Review. According to Dan, the director gave no inclination of an intent to “sack” him. That came a short time later, while Dan was overseas and was blindsided by the now infamous email. 
 

Edited to add: I just noticed that Dan has already clarified. I’m glad to see that Dan set the record straight and that my recollection was vindicated even before I expressed it here. 

Edited December 12, 2019 by Scott Lloyd

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Daniel Peterson said:

It is not true that the director vainly sought to meet with me in order to sack me.

It is not true that the director vainly sought to meet with me.  Period.

I met with him a couple of days before I left for six weeks overseas, in the Middle East and then in Europe.  I was not sacked in that meeting, and there was no expectation of another meeting before my departure.  I was sacked while I was still in the Middle East.  To be precise, I was sacked by email while I was in my room in the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem.

Just for the record.

 

Thanks for showing up, Dan. I tried to find something definite on this last night as it is ridiculous you still have to defend yourself on what happened. Unfortunately there is so much chatter on it and the board search function is useless past a year, I ran out of time.  I should just bookmark this for the next time it gets dragged out.

That it’s in a thread about Bill who took a lot of flak for trying to set the record straight...frustrating to say the very least. 

Too many friends and good people leaving us lately.

Cris/Cal

[alter idem]

15 hours ago, JamesBYoung said:

There was a definite need for cleansing the Institute of loose-cannon apologists in my opinion.

Sacking Dan with an email while he was on tour for the Institute was bad form, I think.

I still remember that, it was so shocking.  But, years later, I have to say,  I really enjoy the Interpreter articles, they are great.  Something good did come out of that.  As for the Maxwell Institute...I don't even know what they do these days, maybe their work is just more low key.

[JAHS]

 

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Edited December 12, 2019 by JAHS
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[JamesBYoung]

10 hours ago, alter idem said:

I still remember that, it was so shocking.  But, years later, I have to say,  I really enjoy the Interpreter articles, they are great.  Something good did come out of that.  As for the Maxwell Institute...I don't even know what they do these days, maybe their work is just more low key.

Look it up.  Chris Blythe does amazingly superior work.

[Scott Lloyd]

13 hours ago, alter idem said:

I still remember that, it was so shocking.  But, years later, I have to say,  I really enjoy the Interpreter articles, they are great.  Something good did come out of that.  As for the Maxwell Institute...I don't even know what they do these days, maybe their work is just more low key.

It has been far more academically oriented, especially in the years following the purge of 2012 up to a year or two ago, when it was reined in a bit by Church leaders. 
 

For my part, it has held very little interest for me as a non-academic since it was re-invented in 2012. Too esoteric and ivory tower for my tastes. 
 

I do continue to enjoy the Interpreter, though. I agree with you that it was something good that came out of the 2012 episode. 

Edited December 13, 2019 by Scott Lloyd

[Avatar4321]

Though we werent close I considerrd him a friend. He will be missed

[Bob Crockett]

On 12/11/2019 at 7:26 PM, Calm said:

You may have that reversed from what I have heard....as in Dan and others were trying to meet with him to discuss obstacles to getting work done,etc.

I base my opinion solely upon the two emails exchanged between Gerald Bradford and Daniel Peterson.  Bradford has never spoken about the issue.  

BYU just didn't want to continue to publish the Review in its format under Dr. Peterson.   It may or may not have had something to do with John Dehlin and Smoot's pending review of Dehlin.  I suspect it probably did. BYU made the decision to remove Dr. Peterson from his editorship but retain him in all his other responsibilities. 

When you read the email exchange between the two men you can get a feel for what was really happening.  But Dr. Peterson is in a far better place today, and I support him.

Edited December 13, 2019 by Bob Crockett

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

base my opinion solely upon the two emails exchanged between Gerald Bradford and Daniel Peterson.

And with that incomplete info, you came to a faulty conclusion...unless you believe Dan is lying.

Have you changed your opinion now you have more info (the post in this thread from him)?

Quote

When you read the email exchange between the two men you can get a feel for what was really happening.  But Dr. Peterson is in a far better place today, and I support him.

I have read and heard much more than just those two emails, so it would seem my opinion is much more informed than yours.  

Your conclusions about it being "BYU" are overstated as is your conclusion that Bradford attempted to meet with Peterson prior to his leaving to sack him.  He says he was hoping to "hear from you on the Review" which implies more written or phone conversation and states it was about the Review and specifies issues with the Review itself.  Only later in a separate paragraph does he move on to Peterson's situation and says "I now realize it was wrong to expect..."  That "now" suggests he decided to terminate Peterson around the time he was writing the email.  There is nothing to suggest as well he initiated any effort to speak to Peterson, no references to anticipating Peterson returning an earlier email or call either.  Hoping is not expecting.  A boss asking for a meeting or conversation would be expecting his employee to contact him, not just vaguely hoping.

Peterson's email states his wife predicted he would be terminated once he was out of the country and she used the word "pull" which does not imply that Dan was ditching any attempt to meet with him face to face so Bradford was forced to do it after he left, but rather that was Bradford's original intention in her view.

Neither email suggests Bradford was anticipating a face to face about termination prior to Peterson leaving the country.  Bradford could have easily included that in the discussion of what he was anticipating, as in 'I needed to talk about your future as well as the future of the Review.'

But even if that demonstrates that you took too great a leap in your conclusions, imo, all that is moot with Dan's information.  And since you got that bit about the situation completely wrong, you should be less secure imo in making pontifications on what "BYU" wanted to happen, etc.  If you mean the then current directors of the Maxwell Institute, you should specify them rather than use "BYU" which implies the global entity of BYU, which would imo include the Board of Regents Trustees.

If you really support Dan, then you would stop spreading misinformation about his dismissal.

PS:  it wasn't even Smoot who was reviewing Mormonstories and Dehlin, but Greg Smith.  Something else you got wrong.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/news-gregory-l-smiths-review-of-mormon-stories/

----

You might want to read this to become at least somewhat more informed than just two emails...

https://web.archive.org/web/20131019035420/http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2013/10/who-should-get-the-credit-for-giving-me-the-boot.html

Edited December 13, 2019 by Calm