Sabar's New Morton Smith Article

[StephenGoranson]

i wrote, above, Mon Mar 11, 2024 11:10 am
"You, SA, have misrepresented what I "accept."
No written notice taken of that, while plowing on.
Just another day, to you, at your office?

[StephenGoranson]

For example, "Secret Alias" asserted, Mon Mar 11, 2024 10:54 am,
that "you accept the idea that homosexuality = criminality"

On what basis?

[Secret Alias]

What is the relevance of anything in this Atlantic piece on the question of whether the letter is authentic or not in 2024? If it were written before Agamemnon Tselikas's article, there might be some relevance. Marginal. But now? Morton Smith made a transcription of the letter. OK. That was used for a while. Then fifty years later a better expert on Greek manuscripts from the period made a better transcription of the document and many of the misconceptions from Morton Smith's original transcription were corrected. Surely Tselikas's transcription is more authoritative than Smith when - as you already reference - he has a vested interest supposedly in advancing LGBTQ agendas. Surely if Morton Smith advocated for "gay readings" of words from manuscripts of Irenaeus or Tertullian that wouldn't move you. You are only moved by the circular argument that because Smith forged the text he knows what it's supposed to say. The accent is clearly on the iota not the omicron.



Tselikas has shown (a) what Morton Smith read as a sigma is an iota and (b) the accent is on the iota not the omicron. Therefore there is no gay reference in the letter, only what Sabar might be able to argue is "homosexual projection" on the part of the discoverer. Sabar has apparently demonstrated (he never produces the letter he cites from) Morton Smith confessed himself to be gay. A letter exists where, long before it was fashionable, Smith stood up for gay rights. I know that. Sabar says he wrote something (he doesn't cite the whole reference) about "coming out" with this letter. I trust that Sabar isn't lying about what he claims Smith wrote on top of the original letter. Granting all that, in light of Tselikas's authoritative transcription of the original manuscript, at best Sabar wrote an extended piece on how homosexuality led Morton Smith to misinterpret the letter. Not surprising as he was not very proficient at Greek handwriting from the period. No expertise or at least not as much as the actual experts he sought opinions from during the writing of his 1973 book. It was all Greek to him.

[Secret Alias]

Here's the stuffed head of his "homo hunt":

In the late 1970s, Smith had a brief relationship with an openly gay Columbia student.

That's it. And then this immediately follows:

But not until after retirement did Smith attempt to come out.

In February 1989, an NYU dean published a screed against student protesters who had demanded classes on “gay, lesbian and bisexual issues.” The dean lamented that any campus would treat homosexuality as “an acceptable form of normative behavior.”

The article appeared in an obscure journal published by a group of conservative professors opposed to campus activism. Smith had long supported the group, but the dean’s words got to him. “Homosexuality is a way of life followed by millions of adult Americans,” Smith typed, in a letter to the journal’s editors. “Attempts to require adherence to a norm from which figures so various as King David, Socrates, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Frederick the Great happily deviated, should disturb a Dean with even a rudimentary knowledge of cultural history.

“The most shameful thing,” Smith continued, was that students had to protest “to get an honest and complete course on a subject of legitimate concern to many students, faculty members, and administrators.” Equally worrisome, Smith wrote, was that the dean, as an administrator, had the power to discriminate against gay job seekers.

“I must ask that you publish this letter,” he wrote.

Smith didn’t identify his own sexual orientation, but he’d stood up for himself in a public way. On a copy of the letter he mailed to Lee Avdoyan, his friend and former student, Smith wrote, “Herewith my ‘coming-out’ article. I never expected to write one, but I’m getting old and irritable, and [the dean’s article] was just too much.” The journal never published the letter.

I know copies of the letter exists. The bit about what he wrote on top of this I trust that Avdoyan has the letter as so described. But what is the context of the statement? I don't know. I don't know what else said to contextualize this "‘coming-out’ article." But yes it appears that the "homo hunt" has finally produced a stuffed head. This is apparently a victory. Sabar is a talent writer and a great researcher. Too bad the Letter to Theodore doesn't reference homosexuality.

My guess though is, that the tossing in of the rumor of "graduate student" relationship, no names, means Sabar couldn't find an actual lover. Silver prize in the homo hunt.

[Secret Alias]

I can't find the specific reference to protests at NYU but this is at least some context to the times:

The first Lesbian and Gay Studies Department was founded in 1989 at San Francisco City College, providing
a space and a curriculum dedicated to the experiences of non-heterosexual people. The
development of online and in-print resources, such as Campus Pride9
and The Advocate’s
College Guide for LGBT Students (2006), collect and disseminate information about the
resources available to LGBTQ students on campuses across the nation, to include ranking
the most LGBTQ-friendly schools (as well as the least-friendly schools). Finally, studentorganized pride weeks and designated student resource centers have popped up on
campuses across the nation. However, as of 2014 just under 5% of all four-year institutions
in the United States offered a professionally staffed campus LGBTQ center (Marine and
Nicolazzo 2014), evidence that university commitments to creating welcoming spaces for
sexual and gender minority students vary across campuses. https://escholarship.org/content/qt41q3 ... 64f8a4ca8e

So he signed on to a trend which is now standard in universities. He was also dying of cancer.

[StephenGoranson]

here's a snippet from Sabar's article:

"....Scholars who knew him well suspect that whatever triggered his break with the Church was the key to understanding his life and work, even if—perhaps especially if—Smith never spoke of it. The historian Albert Baumgarten, who was one of Smith’s first doctoral students at Columbia, believes that “something took place in Smith’s life that shook his certainty.”

Smith’s literary executor, the Harvard religion scholar Shaye Cohen, told me that he’d never ruled out the possibility of a “secret Morton,” a part of his past he’d hidden from even his closest colleagues.

Was there a secret Morton? I began my search with a visit to a pair of Texas scholars who had a new theory about Secret Mark. Not because their theory was fully convincing—it wasn’t—but because their analysis of the text pointed to why Secret Mark might be something other than early Christian scripture....."

[PS. was it later cancer or "painful shingles"?]

[billd89]

So everything Secret Alias has written testifying to Morton Smith being a slandered heterosexual is now proven rubbish? Oh dear. Color me surprised. And what a hill to die on ...

Whether or not Smith was gay (or bisexual) I do not care; whether a scholar's self-loathing, or a 'hidden self' warped his scholarship this way or that, weeeelllllllll that's fair-game honestly. Smith's issues seem very real and must be factored in evaluations of both his homosexualist conclusions and -- quite possibly -- a bald literary fraud. "Oh, Mary!"

To date, the most interesting revelation about Morton Smith on this forum was my own post, on the 'Antikythera' thread.

[Secret Alias]

After 9/11 I lived in a house with 6 black men and one had full blown AIDS. When I've had gay clients who were signing big checks I've noticed my language unconsciously becomes more "sexually ambiguous." I start referring to "partners" rather than girlfriends/wives. I pull out yiddish for Jewish clients. I start sounding almost like I work in a deli. I'm sure there is a check big enough for me to modify my language even more. Life is complex. I honestly don't believe there is identity let alone sexual identity. It's just something people do to feel they belong to a group. But that's my opinion. A bad personality is an amazing foil to all sorts of bad relationships. No one likes me. And if they start liking me my bad personality comes to my rescue. That's the meaning behind Chrestos I think. We should be after "good" or "bad" people but the "right" relationships for us. Not sure the right relationships are ever sexual.

[billd89]

But this isn't about you, is it? It's about M.Smith quite deliberately queering Jesus. And Why: 'I Lie Because I Can.'

Sure: maybe an historical Jesus lived AND he was oriented towards same-sex relationships. Who knows! But if --IF-- Smith CREATED this document/narrative, don't you agree he must have been a psychopathic liar? An extravagantly grandiose, narcissistically opportunistic fraud of very the highest order? (Yes: a Bad Person indeed.)

N'est plus ultra is the correct French expression, in this case.

And here we pause, to read (and hopefully: think) about a few famous literary frauds and hoaxes in history. And one lasting urban myth ...

[Secret Alias]

Everyone projects things from their inner world. Of what value does once intimating a homosexual interpretation of a text that doesn't have a reference to homosexuality. It's like me at the forum bringing up whores in a discussion about Polycarp. What relevance does it have?