John Laurence Gee (born 1964) is an American Latter-day Saint scholar, Mormon apologist and an Egyptologist. He currently teaches at Brigham Young University (BYU) and serves in the Department of Near Eastern Languages. He is known for his writings in support of the Book of Abraham.
Life
Education
Gee graduated from BYU in 1988.
Later, he became a graduate student in Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
and received his M.A.
in Near Eastern Studies
in 1991.
[Gee's 1991 "Notes on the Sons of Horus" was his master's thesis.See ; ] He earned his Ph.D. in
Egyptology at
Yale University[ in 1998, completing his dissertation on ancient Egyptian ritual purity, entitled: The requirements of ritual purity in ancient Egypt.]
Teaching
Gee was the William "Bill" Gay Research Professor of Egyptology at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at BYU.
Editorial work
In this role, he is an editor for the Studies in the Book of Abraham series and a member of the editorial board of the Eastern Christian Texts series.
Gee has been involved with various professional societies. He is editor of the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, and has served on the Society's committees and board of trustees.["Stylistic Dating of Greco-Roman Stele II: Heads and Hands" (paper presented at the American Research Center in Egypt Annual Meetings, Atlanta, Georgia, 25 April 2003)] and the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies.[See 2007 lectures at ]
Gee has written an overview of Coptic literature.[ link to article] In May 2008 Gee gave a presentation on the early conversion to Christianity in Egypt at the Coptic Church Centre in London.
Mormon studies
Gee is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which believes Joseph Smith divinely translated the Book of Abraham from Egyptian papyrus in the 19th century. Because of his expertise in Near Eastern studies and Egyptology, Gee is highly visible in the debate over the authenticity of the Book of Abraham. His interest in these issues led to his involvement with the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) at BYU since the late 1980s.
In 2010 Gee made a presentation with Louis C. Midgley at the BYU Mormon Media Studies Symposium reporting on their study into the effect of the tendency of Evangelical Christians to attack the right of other groups to call themselves Christians and how this affected Mitt Romney's presidential campaign.[ Deseret News. Nov. 14, 2010]
Criticism of scholarship
One of Gee's former Yale professors, Robert K. Ritner, later publicly criticized some of Gee's interpretations of the Joseph Smith Papyri as well as his failure to share drafts of his work with Ritner, as his other students have.[In an article highly critical of Joseph Smith's interpretation of Egyptian writing, Ritner wrote, "With regard to the articles by my former student John Gee, I am constrained to note that unlike the… practice of all my other Egyptology students, Gee never chose to share drafts of his publications with me to elicit scholarly criticism, so that I have encountered these only recently. It must be understood that in these apologetic writings, Gee’s opinions do not necessarily reflect my own, nor the standards of Egyptological proof that I required at Yale or Chicago."Republished with revised introduction in See also this BYU review of Ritner's critique in ]
One of Gee's former co-authors, fellow professors at BYU, and editor of the Joseph Smith Papers project, Brian Hauglid, is also critical of Gee's interpretations of the Joseph Smith Papyri. In 2018, Hauglid wrote, "I no longer agree with Gee or Mulhestein. I find their apologetic "scholarship" on the BoA abhorrent."
Saving Faith controversy
Gee's 2020 book Saving Faith: How Families Protect, Sustain, and Encourage Faith caused immediate controversy with its suggestion that sexual abuse might be a possible factor in homosexual attraction. Multiple reviewers noted that this and other claims were outside Gee's realm of expertise and asserted that he misinterpreted data to arrive at his conclusions.[" Gee, Saving Faith (Reviewed by Chad Curtis)" by Chad Curtis. Association for Mormon Letters. Accessed 3 September 2020.][" Saving Faith and Expertise" by Kevin Shafer. 23 August 2020. Accessed 3 September 2020.][" Controversial Mormon book pulled from publication" by Jana Riess. Religion News Service. September 8, 2020. Accessed September 9, 2020.] The book was pulled by its publisher.
Works
- Theses
- Papers
- Articles
- Books
See also
-
Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)
Sources
External links
