A prolific author and professor of Biblical and Mormon scripture at BYU, he was fluent in numerous languages, including Classical Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian, Coptic, Arabic, German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish. He also studied Dutch and Russian during World War II. He also studied Old Bulgarian and Old English, and his fluency in Old Norse was reportedly sufficient to enable him to read an entire encyclopedia in Norwegian.[citation needed]

Nibley wrote and lectured on LDS scripture and doctrinal topics, publishing many articles in LDS Church magazines. His An Approach to the Book of Mormon was adopted in 1957 as a religious lesson manual by the LDS Church.

Hugh Nibley was born in Portland, Oregon a son of Alexander Nibley and his wife Agnes Sloan. Alexander Nibley was the son of Charles W. Nibley and his wife Rebecca Neibaur. Alexander served from 1906-1907 as president of the Netherlands Mission of the LDS Church. Rebecca was the daughter of Alexander Neibaur a Jewish native of Alsace who had moved to England and converted to Mormonism. She later joined the LDS church and emigrated to America. Nibley married Phyllis Draper in September 1946 and the couple had eight children.

At age seventeen, Nibley became an LDS missionary in the Swiss-German Mission, and served for two-and-a-half years, from 1927 to 1930.

Nibley began his studies at University of California, Los Angeles, graduating summa cum laude, and earned a doctorate as a University Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in 1938. He wanted to explore the phenomenon of the mob in ancient Rome for his thesis, but his graduate committee rejected it as irrelevant to modern civilization. Kristallnacht occurred at about the same time in Germany.

During World War II he enlisted as a private, but eventually became a Master Sergeant working in military intelligence for the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, the famed "Screaming Eagles". He drove the first jeep ashore on Utah Beach during the D-Day invasion, landed by glider at Eindhoven as part of Operation Market Garden, and witnessed the aftermath of Nazi concentration camps.

At the request of Apostle John A. Widtsoe he became a professor at Brigham Young University in 1946, teaching history, languages, and religion. Nibley served as a faculty member at the LDS Church owned school until his official retirement in 1975, but he continued teaching until 1994. During his final years as a professor emeritus, and prior to his last illness, Nibley maintained a small office in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU, where he worked on his magnum opus titled One Eternal Round, which focuses on the hypocephalus ("Facsimile 2") in the Book of Abraham. He turned over the materials for his last book to FARMS in the late months of 2002. It is expected to be published by March 2010 in commemoration of his 100th anniversary of his birth. Never one for the spotlight, Hugh gave authorization to have his biography written only late in his life, and it was published just two years before his death.

After being confined to bed by illness for over two years, Nibley died on February 24, 2005 in his home in Provo, Utah at the age of 94.

Nibley's viewpoints marked him as atypical of Mormon stereotypes. He was an active Democrat and an ardent conservationist, and often criticized Republican policies. He was strongly opposed to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War during an era "when it was very unpopular in LDS culture to do so." He authored "Approaching Zion", an indictment of capitalism and endorsement of the law of consecration.

Nibley was also bothered by what he saw as the unthinking, sometimes almost dogmatic application of some portions of BYU's honor code. Nibley had no objection to requirements of chastity or obeying the Word of Wisdom, but he thought the often intense scrutiny directed at grooming (hairstyles and clothing) was misguided. In 1973, he said, "The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism... the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances."