Archives West Finding Aid

Dr. Heber Cyrus Snell, 91, well known Utah educator and writer, died today in the Logan hospital of natural causes. He was born January 16, 1883 in Spanish Fork to Rufus P. and Ellen C. Snell. He married Hedwig E. Stauffer September 6, 1905, in Logan LDS Temple. She died June 8, 1945 in Pocatello. He then married Phoebe Linford Rees June 23, 1947, in the Logan temple. Dr. Snell served an LDS mission in Chicago. He attended Brigham Young University where he edited the Campus paper, The White and Blue, graduating in 1912. He served as principal of San Luis Academy, Manassa, Colo.; principal of the Big Horn Academy, Cowley, Wyo., and as superintendent of schools in Lovell, Wyoming. Dr. Snell graduated from the University of Utah with the M.S. degree and received the Ph.D. degree from University of Chicago. He was a teacher of psychology and education in Snow College, Ephraim, and had been director of LDS Institute of Religion, affiliated with the University of Idaho in Pocatello. In 1945 he joined the faculty of Logan LDS Institute of Religion. He was the author of three books, Ancient Israel: Its Story and Meaning, Through the Years - Occasional Writings, and Gospel References, which was used by several missions.

Survivors include his widow of Logan; two daughters, Mrs. Harold (Vesta) Francis, Morgan; Mrs. John (Alta) Teeter, Milwaukee, Wisc.; two sons, Dr. Esmond E. Snell, professor at University of California, Berkeley, and Dr. Junius Snell, University of Ohio at Columbus. A son, Hillman Snell, died January 4, 1974. He also has 17 grandchildren, and 10 great grandchildren. Dr. Snell was the last surviving member of a family of 10.

Source: Obituary from The Herald Journal, February 1, 1974 Vol. 65, no. 28 page 4

The most important single achievement in Heber Snell's life was the publication of his book: Ancient Israel: Its Story and Meaning, The book was the culmination of his scholarly and professional life. He spent more than a decade writing it and three decades in its defense against all of the critics in and out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also referred to as Mormon and/or LDS Church).

Dr. Snell came from a flinty Mormon background, spending a lifetime as a teacher in the public schools, in church-owned institutions, and finally in the LDS Institutes of Religion at Pocatello, Idaho and Logan, Utah.

From his own accounts we learn that he taught religion classes in Spanish Fork before he had received any education beyond that offered in the public school system. He was called to a mission in the Northern States where he distinguished himself by his devotion to Bible study and to the preparation of a guide for the study of the scriptures by other missionaries. Returning home from his mission he taught school in Nounan, Bear Lake County Idaho, but he soon gave up his position there to continue his formal education at Brigham Young University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912. At BYU he came under the influence of some Mormon scholars including Nels Nelson, author of the Scientific Aspects of Mormonism; William H. Chamberlain from whom he received instruction in the New Testament; and Alfred Osmond, a Shakespearean scholar. With this preparation he went to the San Lewis Academy in Manassa, Colorado and spent the year 1913-14 in a very stern situation. This account of his experience there reads like the experience of the Hoosier Schoolmaster. After the year in Manassa he returned to the University of Utah to work on an advanced degree in English but again interrupted his schooling to become principal of the Big Horn Academy in Cowley, Wyoming. The academy was an LDS institution, and Heber Snell being a young and ambitious man went to Cowley with every intention of making it the leading school in Wyoming and second only to Brigham Young University in the West, but on receiving an offer to become superintendent of the Lovell, Wyoming schools, he abandoned his ambitions for the academy and spent four years as superintendent in Lovell. In this assignment he reports conflict between the school administration and his Board, and in some exasperation left to return to Utah and to the University of Utah for a second time. He changed his major to psychology and education, and on completing his Masters Degree went to Snow College, a Mormon institution at that time, where he spent thirteen years teaching theology and the Bible while serving as head of the Department of Education. While at Snow College he attended the Pacific School of Religion in the summers of 1926-27. This was the first formal study he had taken on the Bible, and anxious to continue toward a formal degree, he transferred his credits from Pacific to the University of Chicago where he ultimately won his PhD. In 1936 he left Snow College to go to the Institute of Religion in Pocatello where he continued to study toward the PhD. On Mrs. Snell's death in 1945 he requested a transfer in order that he might be removed from the site of his wife's death. Franklin West, the Commissioner of Education for the LDS Church, transferred him to the Institute of Religion at Logan, Utah where he studied, where he taught, and where he finished and published his book.

The book, "My Book" as he referred to it so often, bore the title Ancient Israel: Its Story and Meaning Copyrighted in 1948, it moved through a second edition published by Dr. Snell in 1957 and a third edition published by the University of Utah in 1963. It provoked a controversy with some officials of the church and provided Dr. Snell who was retired from the Institute of Religion with a full-time occupation in its sale and defense. In its dedication, the book was addressed "to all readers of this book who, because of it, learn more about the Revelation of God in History--and who, as they learn, strive to be bearers themselves of this Revelation." The idea for the book occurred to Dr. Snell very early, but he recalled that he actually began it when Dr. West, his supervisor in the church system, asked him to write a book on the New Testament. Dr. Snell said in reporting this incident that he had already begun sketching a book on the Old Testament believing, as he said, that he had to write something about the Old Testament first because of the vital relationship between the Old and the New. So he wrote his book using his materials as they were developed for classroom presentation. Notwithstanding later objections to it by church authorities, he was under the impression that Dr. West had always approved the central thesis of the book and had only objected to the author's reference to the Second Isaiah. Dr. Snell was proud to report that it was favorably reviewed in the Journal of Religion at the University of Chicago, in the Expositor and Homilectic Review, and in the Personalist issuing from the University of Southern California. The book was used as a text in a few non-Mormon institutions including the Divinity School at the University of Texas in Austin. Notwithstanding these few favorable reviews in prestigious journals, Dr. Snell was aware that the book was not widely distributed, and he estimated that there was probably no more than 5,000 extant copies and these he surmised were located in the Mormon community.

There are two possible point-of-views about the meaning of history in Dr. Snell's view. The first is that history is the story of man--a continuum of events in the life of man, written by man and having nothing to do with God. The second view, and the one which he expounded, was that history must "bring in God" as well as man--history becomes a dialogue between God and man, this is God's world, if we have a proper view of the totality of things. God is interested in the world--how it goes--how it is to end. God is in his heaven and in a very real sense directing the affairs of earth. If man misbehaves, if his affairs go badly, God provides appropriate punishment. So he saw God intervening in history.

Dr. Snell was brought up on the LDS method of interpretation which he called proof-texting and described as "... a way of getting at the scriptures by simply taking a verse here and there and attempting to prove what you already believe, making a verse prove some idea that you have received from your teaching in theology." This he maintained, was not the right way to get at the meaning of scriptures. His first breaking away from proof-texting came as the result of a class he had from William H. Chamberlain at Brigham Young University. Chamberlain's teaching of the Life of Jesus employed what he characterized as the historical method. Dr. Snell adopted the method and never abandoned it, and made it the central issue in his long debate with the opponents of his book.

Having adopted the historical method in studying the scriptures, Dr. Snell was, at the same time and rather surprisingly, unwilling to be associated with the "higher critics." He objected to the term because for the layman at least, it conveyed a wrong impression. People, he said, are under the impression that the critic is intent on destroying the Bible, when in fact the critic only wants to know what the Bible really says, what it means, and what reaction is required of him.

Due to criticisms of his book and of his teaching, Dr. Snell was given an early release from the LDS Institute of Religion. He busied himself with the sale and defense of his book and did some teaching for the University of Utah's Department of Philosophy. He continued to attend priesthood meetings, ward meetings, and wherever there was an audience he continued to expound on the value of the scriptures properly interpreted. He maintained a voluminous correspondence with friends and critics and maintained an association with various members of the Snell group--a group composed of Mormon intellectuals who met to discuss religion, sociology, economics, and the cultural setting of Mormonism. He also put together a small volume of Biblical Essays; included among these were "The Historical Background of the Old Testament," "The Making of the Old Testament," "The Structure of the Book of Isaiah," and "The New Testament in the Making." These were essays which had remained unpublished over the years, and they reveal the persistence of his attitudes and interpretations of the Bible.

His final written work was to participate in a round table with Dr. Sidney Sperry and Dr. Kent Robson on the subject "the Bible in the church." He was flattered that Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought, would publish his statement. My apologia, if one is needed, he said is that "I have been aware as a member of the church, of its great resources as a moral and spiritual force and I desire, in what I write here, only to enhance them." There followed a summary of his position taken in his book including a warning of the dangers of using a dogmatic method in the interpretation of holy scripture and an exegesis on the historical method and his suggestions for improvement. The responses of Dr. Sperry and Robson require no comment here except to report that Robson in concluding his comment expressed the hope that men like Snell and Sperry "... will assist us in advancing beyond the superficial to a deeper understanding of scriptures." This comment nettled Dr. Snell who insisted that a revision in the attitude and interpretation of scripture was essential to the true mission of the church, hence his differences with Sperry were not superficial but fundamental. The Round Table was his last published work.

Prior to his death he committed his personal archives, i.e. letters, unpublished essays, diaries, and miscellanea to the Merrill Library at Utah State University. He also submitted to extensive voice library interviews with the University Librarian. The interview concluded shortly before his death revealed his disappointment in his failure to correct his church in its abuse of the scripture. He had, nevertheless, continued to be active in the church notwithstanding several attempts to excommunicate him. On these occasions he was defended by his fellow intellectuals, most of them members of the Snell group. His position remained constant and his theme unchanged. While he was willing to attribute moral and spiritual resources to his church he never abdicated or slackened his criticism. The church was a moral and spiritual force, but he insisted its members participated along with the rest of mankind in a divine plan and all men could and ought to enjoy God's self-revelation.

On the completion of the register of the Snell archive, it is to be hoped that it will be used to investigate more thoroughly the life and work of this simple dedicated man, and perhaps some will come to have new insight into the character of the Mormon church due to his persistent criticism of it.