Sabar's New Morton Smith Article

[Peter Kirby]

This thread opened my mind a little on that point:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7008

The reading makes sense.

[billd89]

Drivel.

I don't fault M.Smith for being a closeted homosexual. I fault M.Smith for being a psychopathic fraud. His belabored, grandiose ploy might yet baffle simple minds, but it doesn't baffle me.

[Secret Alias]

It's a nice story. There's no homosexuality in the letter. There will always be homosexual conspiracy theories. Nothing has changed. Smith and Landau accepted Smith was gay and taking that as their starting point they argued that it is a post-Eusebian pseudepigraphon. I must be from another time. I don't get this "I knew he was gay THEREFORE it's a forgery." The supposed "gay guy" interpreted his discovery through a "gay lens." There's still no "naked man with naked man." That came from Smith's gay imagination. Is it a crime to be gay now?

The article's entire effort was to identify Morton Smith as a homosexual. Is that all that stood in the way of "proving" the document was a fake? What's next? Smith's homosexuality led him to him to misread the letter. For the millionth time. Smith read the text as "naked man with naked man." It doesn't say that. The correct reading was established by Tselikas:



I am failing to understand what has changed other than proving that someone is gay was all that was standing in the way of disproving the letter's authenticity. There is no gay reference. It's exactly the kind of reference Clement would make about the Carpocratians. Their love feasts were orgies, with men and women. Hence the "naked with nakeds" reference. Why wouldn't Smith have read the letter correctly, confirmed the shared context with Stromateis 3 and then left the letter at that? Why didn't he write "naked man with naked man"?

Again Smith read what is clearly the iota above as a sigma (an accented sigma or an accented omicron where the accent is way to the right of the vowel!) to make his "gay interpretation" of a text that has no gay reference. Smith didn't write the text. Smith wasn't engaged in a homosexual conspiracy to get revenge on the Church. It can be argued that he wanted a gay reference to be a discovered letter of Clement or someone purporting to be Clement. But surely the forger should know what the correct reading of the words of the letter are!

And this factors into it too https://thehill.com/homenews/lgbtq/4526 ... me-decade/ When you're a minority you have TENUOUS place at the table. "Being normal" exhibiting "normal" behaviors and attributes ensures that you are above suspicion. Make it as a Jew and there's always a whisper, "oh you know how they are." Same with gay, same with black, same with anything not white. There is a reason why people hide being different. Being different means always being suspect.

But of course, there is the irresistible lure of gay conspiracies, impassioned resentment. I get it. Have a good time with it. Not much in this field is fun. The positive I take from all of this is that we aren't scared to treat subjects which were formerly approached with reverence and awe with a National Enquirer like mindset. I guess in some ways that's a good thing. Donald Trump had sex with a porn star, paid her off and got away with it. We're making progress as a society and as a culture.

[Peter Kirby]

Tselikas gives a transcription that differs at a few points:

https://akma.disseminary.org/wp-content ... etMark.pdf

[Peter Kirby]

It says "naked (sg) with naked (pl). There is no argument about this. Look at the accent. It's over the iota not the omicron.

I can see an accent over the iota in the first and third image.

I think I can see what you're talking about in the second image, but it's also kind of blurred into a loop.

[Peter Kirby]

Smith's homosexuality led him to him to misread the letter.

This should be taken seriously as a possibility.

Mark 14:52 with its reference to γυμνὸς may have been a bigger influence here, though.

[Secret Alias]

I reconfirmed with Tselikas if he stands by his rendering about two months ago and sent it to Sabar. On January 17. No interest. That's fine. Who am I. It isn't even addressed in his article. He sent me back an email saying something to the effect that he couldn't include all the people he spoke with while make the article which is fine. It's a well written article. It's well researched. But it's obvious that he tried to extend his approach that he used with the Gospel of Jesus Wife. I have a problem with people who take Smith to be this omniscient "expert" on the handwriting from this period. Why then did he approach all these Greek scholars to examine the handwriting? Answer: he was duping everyone. That's one possibility in theory. But why not write the sigma properly and put the accent over the omicron. That would settle the issue. Since everything in this "masterplan" is built around "naked man with naked man" why does the world's leading expert on this handwriting read "naked with nakeds"?

Tselikas thinks its a forgery. But he doesn't have to do what Sabar did. He doesn't have to put his finger on the scale and take any scraps of information to attack Smith. He thinks its a forgery but a forgery which doesn't make reference to homosexuality.

Another thing. Smith is not Greek. This isn't his natural handwriting. So let's suppose he's aware he's going to make errors. So he buys all these old books and starts inscribing the Letter to Theodore in the blank pages of many of these books. There must have been some errors. Why keep the one version of the manuscript that doesn't say "naked man with naked man" where the attempt - allegedly - to write "naked man with naked man" appears as "naked with nakeds" according to the only expert that matters? Where did this habit of writing bent iotas develop in 25% of the examples (where iota isn't connected to the letters around it)? This must have been the most important part of the master conspiracy. Why not keep at it like the proverbial monkey on the typewriter until you get it right?

The answer is surely that to Smith's eye it looked like "naked man with naked man." That much we know for sure. So now we're down to what's causing the disconnect between Smith meaning to write out omicron sigma (with accent way over on top of the sigma) but it looks to the trained eye as omicron accented iota? Smith simply was predisposed to see "naked man with naked man" as some sort of Rorschach experiment. I can't see a scenario where Smith creates a forgery around "naked man with naked man" and fails to write "naked man with naked man" in bold clear letters. That part of the manuscript you'd expect would be explicit. After all, it's supposedly the whole reason he wrote the manuscript.

[Peter Kirby]

Does it make any difference if a second person executed the handwriting from a γυμνὸς transcription?

[billd89]

Smith's homosexuality led him to him to misread the letter.

This should be taken seriously as a possibility.

You assume something innate, here. By analogy: Would you say someone 'being a woman' would lead them to misread something? A 'feminist perspective' might be identified in a female (or male) writer; that isn't the same thing as the writer/scholar's gender.

I suppose this scholar's odd and complicated homosexualist agenda (i.e. queering Jesus, to snub Christianity), by constrast to his purported identity. Again: I don't know Smith was a homosexual -- I don't know what was 'innate' in Smith (per your "serious" suggestion.) otoh, he definitely had a grandiose and narcissistic agenda!

And that's where our insight lies: Smith's underlying mental state, not his assumed 'sexual category'.

I've wondered IF M. Smith encountered a forger, and paid for a page executed on old parchment. I doubt that would have been so expensive, particularly if Smith provided the text. Given a recent scandal, we'd be foolish to ignore that distinct possibility.

[Peter Kirby]

Smith's homosexuality led him to him to misread the letter.

This should be taken seriously as a possibility.

You assume something innate, here. By analogy: Would you say someone 'being a woman' would lead them to misread something? A 'feminist perspective' might be identified in a female (or male) writer; that isn't the same thing as the writer/scholar's gender.

I suppose this scholar's odd and complicated homosexualist agenda (i.e. queering Jesus, to snub Christianity), by constrast to his purported identity. Again: I don't know Smith was a homosexual -- I don't know what was 'innate' in Smith (per your "serious" suggestion.) otoh, he definitely had a grandiose and narcissistic agenda!

And that's where our insight lies: Smith's underlying mental state, not his assumed 'sexual category'.

The clarification nobody needed, thanks.