Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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billd89
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend?

Post by billd89 »

'Beard', in the parlance of the day :lol:
Secret Alias
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by Secret Alias »

Sure. A hidden beard is called a clean shaven face.

He was dating the mother of one of his students. He'd have gotten in trouble. That's why it was kept secret. She was as much a beard as if he were bedding his cousin or Theodore Gaster's wife. The vulgarity of conceit.

https://salainenevankelista.blogspot.co ... h.html?m=1

As an added note when Quesnell told Flusser about his theory about Morton Smith's homosexuality it is worth noting that Flusser blends it together with the idea that he originally dated women. He says something like he might have forged secret Mark after being rejected by a woman. So this report confirms a "heterosexual period" for Smith. Stupid that we are even discussing this.
Secret Alias
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by Secret Alias »

Many of the student's in the library started to chuckle at the befuddled Dr Smith. Yet Ethne grew upset with the chorus of laughter and told her friends to stop making fun of their absent minded professor. Some of her friends wondered why it was that she was so protective of him; little did they know that Ethne and Professor Smith had a little secret. It all started about a month earlier during Barnard College’s traditional Open House. “The school had long tradition of encouraging mothers to meet with the staff and even attend classes with their young girls,” Ethne remembers.

Her father had just passed away in April and her mother was just getting over the loss. “I introduced my beautiful mother Miriam who looked every bit the spitting image of Lana Turner. “You have to understand this was the 1950s,” she adds. “Young ladies were going off to university and the institution extended an opportunity to their parents to sit in with them at their classes. Barnard had a special relationship with Columbia which meant that I was taking a 9:00 am with a new professor of ancient history named Morton Smith at Columbia. Mother and I shared an interest in ancient history, so we went together to my class.”

After class Ethne and Miriam approached Morton Smith. "I said, 'this is my mother' and he acted like any man who laid eyes on her. His eyebrows raised a little and he took a quick double take before clearing his throat," remembers Ethne. We started talking about the course load for the year and the usual small talk. Yet Professor Smtih seemed especially chatty. He seemed like any other man interested in my mother.”

“My mother had a British background so she was very good at appearing unmoved and disinterested. As mother and I walked away from our lengthy chat I remember telling her something to the effect, 'I think Dr. Smith would like to see you again.' I talked her into coming into class the next week. She needed the distraction."

"They started talking and after a long while she told him that they would meet again without me. I think she said something like "We'll meet beside the statue of Athena at Lowe library and that's exactly where he met her a day or two later," recalls Ethne. "I don't know why I was playing Cupid. I thought I was doing my mother some good. She needed to get out."

Ethne also recalls how Smith and her mother had to go to great lengths to keep their relationship secret. "They saw each other whenever Smith's schedule allowed him to get away. My mother never told me about her private affairs. She never married again after the death of my father. No matter how old I got she never told me anything about what went on with her boyfriends. She was very British that way."

"She and Smith continued to date all the way to the time Smith left for his summer trip. He spoke about it a lot but never mentioned anything about going to the Mar Saba monastery. He was going to Jerusalem to meet friends. I knew that. My mother knew he was brilliant. She found him funny and charming and loved to be in his company."

"Of course I kept their relationship secret. We could all have gotten in a lot of trouble potentially - especially Smith. I remember we all went to dinner after he came back from Mar Saba. He was very excited about his discovery. He went on forever about how he came across this letter of the Church Father Clement. Yet at the same time he couldn't stop complaining about the monastery. He was very sick. He never got any sleep. The monks were singing all the time. It drove him crazy. He swore he would never go back."

"He talked about how bad the food was and we all kept eating. It was quite funny in a way. Mentioning soup with the octopus at the monastery and then we were in New York having a wonderful meal at a wonderful restaurant with great service."

"The bad news for my mother was that once Smith came back with this big discovery that became the focus of his whole life. He was consulting with this professor and that. My mother and he just drifted apart. Maybe it was too soon after my father died. I don't know. I think there was some real compatibility between her and Smith. My father wasn't Jewish. He was Episcopalian so marriage wouldn't have been an issue. If he hadn't have found the manuscript, who knows."

All of this would have remained a private anecdote if it weren’t for a chance reading over a generation later. "I remember picking this book,” again clutching her copy of Bart Ehrman’s book. “When I read what he insinuated about Smith. I hit the ceiling. Morton Smith was one of the most honest, sincere, straight forward man I had ever met. Then I started reading more about the wild accusations that were being thrown around by his associates. Smith was gay? I thought to myself, why are they doing this now after he was dead? If my mother was alive she would have vouched for him too. There was a real attraction."

For Ethne Chesterman the attacks against her mother’s former boyfriend were personal. She said that anyone who met them couldn’t help but notice the attraction between the two. “The whole thing didn’t make sense to me,” she noted. “Why would someone in his position risk everything to be with my mother?” Ethne pauses for a moment and flips through the pages of Lost Christianities before landing on a certain page and quickly glancing over a few words.

“What kind of crazy conspiracy theorist would imply that Smith was gay then?” Ethne shrugs her shoulders in disbelief. “What would they say about my mother? He used her to cover up his homosexual tendencies? But they weren’t supposed to be together. Having a relationship with my mother would get him into more trouble than having being gay at that time.”
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billd89
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Ten years? Impressive

Post by billd89 »

You've been banging this drum a looooong time.

I know nothing of Smith's sexuality, and the homosexual charge always struck me as outright character assassination.
Secret Alias
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by Secret Alias »

And so has the other side. The facts are the facts.
StephenGoranson
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by StephenGoranson »

Morton Smith’s relations with women and men may be less relevant than whether suggesting NT homosexuality is something that may have fit his 1950s outlook.

Morton Smith made one of his main arguments--at length--that the Letter was actually by Clement of Alexandria, but Geoffrey Smith (U Texas, Austin), in the L. Michael White Symposium online, made, in my opinion, a strong case that whoever wrote the letter used the writings of Eusebius, and that therefore the Letter is later and not by Clement.

The above observations, more or less, have been made before.

From Geoffrey Smith’s UTx site:
“He is currently working on a third book, coauthored with Brent Landau, The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Rogue Scholar, A Controversial Gospel of Jesus, and the Fierce Debate Over Its Authenticity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press (under contract; forthcoming 2021).”

Apparently they intend to propose a post-Eusebius but pre-Voss (and hence pre-Morton Smith) setting for composition of the letter, as a text by a pseudo-Clement.

But, unless I missed it, the book is not today listed at Yale U Press nor at Worldcat, so I guess it will not appear in 2021. Apparently it is delayed. Anyway, I look forward to reading it.
gryan
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by gryan »

StephenGoranson wrote: Wed Dec 08, 2021 4:42 am
Apparently they intend to propose a post-Eusebius but pre-Voss (and hence pre-Morton Smith) setting for composition of the letter, as a text by a pseudo-Clement.
What does "pre-Voss" mean?
StephenGoranson
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Re: Morton Smith's Girlfriend's Daughter Dies

Post by StephenGoranson »

Voss refers to a 1646 book by Isaac Vossius in which the "Letter" fragment had been copied. Strictly speaking, the handwritten copy could have been made at any time on or after 1646, but I just wrote simply pre-Voss because, for other reasons, I get the sense--rightly or wrongly--that the G. Smith/B. Landau book will propose a setting for the composition earlier than 1646. But, for whatever reason, their book is delayed.


Epistolae genuinae S. Ignatii martyris :
quae nunc primum lucem vident ex bibliotheca Florentina. Adduntur S. Ignatii epistolae, quales vulgo circumferuntur. Adhaec S. Barnabae Epistola. Accessit universis translatio vetus. /

Ignatius, Saint Bishop of Antioch; Isaac Vossius; Joan Blaeu
1646
Latin Book [8], 318 pages ; 21 cm (4to)
Amstelodami : Apud Ioannem Blaeu,
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