Secret Mark embodied the faith of Adi Da,
You're American right?
What is it with the vulgar? You can't distinguish ambrosia from Dr. Pepper?
Morton Smith is a Halston. Price is a MAGA hat.Education:
A.B. Harvard, 1936; Ph.D. Hebrew U. of Jerusalem, 1948; Th.D. Harvard Divinity Sch., 1957.
Dissertation:
"Mqbilot ben haBesorot le Sifrut haTannim" (Jerusalem, 1948) = Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, Journal of Biblical Literature Monogr. Ser. 6 (Philadelphia, 1951); "Judaism in Palestine I: To the Maccabean Revolution" (Harvard, 1957).
Professional Experience:
Asst. prof. bibl. lit. Brown, 1950-5; vis. prof. hist, religions Drew U., 1956-7; asst. prof, to prof. hist. Columbia, 1957-85.
Publications:
The Ancient Greeks (Ithaca, 1960; many reprints); Heroes and Gods, with Moses Hadas (New York, 1965; reprt. Freeport, NY, 1970); Palestinian Parties and Politics that Shaped the Old Testament (New York, 1971; 2d ed., London, 1987; Ital. trans. Gli uomini del ritorno: il Dio unico e la formazione dell'Antico Testamento, trans. P. Xella [Verona, 1984]); The Secret Gospel (New York, 1973; repr. Clear-lake, CA, 1982; Wellingborough, 1985); Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge, 1973); The Aretalogy of Mark (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1975); The Ancient History of Western Civilization, with Elias J. Bickerman (New York, 1976); Jesus the Magician (San Francisco, 1978, many reprints; German trans, Jesus der Magier [Munich, 1981]; Span, trans. Jesaus el mago [Barcelona, 1988]); Hope and History: An Exploration (New York, 1980); Der einzige Gott: die Geburt des biblischen Monotheismus, with contributions by Smith, B. Lang, & H. Vorlftnder (Munich, 1981); Religions and Politics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Como, 1985); What the Bible Really Says, ed. with R. Joseph Hoffmann (Buffalo, 1989); Kleine Schriften: Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, ed. Shaye J.D. Cohen (Leiden, 1996) (with bibliography).Festschrift: Christianity, Judaism and Other Greco-Roman Cults: Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty (Leiden, 1975).
Notes:
Morton Smith was in the tradition of Eduard Meyer, A. D. Nock, his Columbia predecessor Elias J. Bickerman, and Arnaldo Momigliano rather than that of Theodor Mommsen and Ronald Syme. He believed that the history of religion was of more lasting importance than political or military history. Further, he did not come to classics through philology. He majored in English as an undergraduate. He was deeply religious, even mystical as a young man and he had decided in college to become an Episcopal priest. He wrote: "My serious work began in 1937 at Harvard Divinity School, especially with New Testament under Henry Cadbury and rabbinics under H. A. Wolfson." He learned Hebrew in a year and obtained a Sheldon Fellowship for study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was trapped there by World War II and took his doctorate in 1948 with a dissertation written in Hebrew on Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels. He became an Episcopal priest and briefly in the forties had a parish. For reasons unclear he lost his faith. He then taught and studied the subject he no longer believed. Indeed with the wrath and inside knowledge of the apostate, he often attacked both Judaism and Christianity unmercifully. He returned to graduate study and began his career in Biblical literature rather than classics.His appointment to succeed Bickerman in 1957 determined his subsequent career in ancient history. In 1963 a Harvard appointment was personally vetoed by Nathan Pusey. Although he taught Greco-Roman history, his publications and the dissertations he directed except for several textbooks were largely in Hellenistic Judaism and in early Christianity.