Sabar's New Morton Smith Article

[StephenGoranson]

The whole new article in The Atlantic contains considerably more than the snippets here.

Did M. Smith have the ability to write the pseudepigraphic (not by Clement) Letter
and the opportunity
and the motive?

I think so.

[StephenGoranson]

Sabar's well-researched full article is imo ground-breaking. I recommend it.

One can get side-tracked by misremembering (as above) when a certain person got married,
or sidetracked by arbitrarily claiming that a certain group's orgies, if they happened, were necessarily purely heterosexual, and even if imagined so, whether that matters for the question at hand.

But, ineluctably,
R. Morton Smith changed--for whatever reason--from a lover of Christianity to a Christianity hater.

[Secret Alias]

You recommend it because

(1) you accept Smith's interpretation of the letter ("naked man with naked man")
(2) you accept the idea that homosexuality = criminality
(3) you accept the idea Smith is an all-knowing supervillain, a son of Satan as such his interpretation of the letter is binding (= "naked man with naked man").

The world's leading expert on handwriting from this period, the guy who literally 50 other experts from Greece all bow their head to, saying it doesn't say "naked man with naked man" but "naked (sg) with naked (pl)."



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. So the world's leading expert who has no dog in this hunt. End of story.

Your argument requires Smith to be an all-knowing genius. He read the text right because he wrote the text. But that's a circular argument. Clement says elsewhere the Carpocratians engaged in orgies at their love feasts. This is a letter purporting to be from Clement. Even a forger who may not have been Smith would have drawn from known references. My argument is not circular. Yours is.

Tselikas thinks it's a forgery for entirely different reasons other than this homosexual hit-piece. It's a well written hit piece. But irrelevant as the text does not mention homosexuality. If anything Smith's homosexuality led him to mistake an orgy reference regarding the Carpocratians found in various ancient sources including Clement for something more in keeping with his own proclivity.

We've moved on from criminalizing homosexuals, Jews, blacks whatever. Unless you're old or religious of course.

[Secret Alias]

"Tselikas is certainly a well-respected expert in Greek palaeography." in Brown and Pantuck. Understatement of the year. Every manuscript, in every monastery, in every place in the Greek world are Tselikas's. They belong to him in a way that has no precedent in the history of scholarship. He simply has unfettered access to ALL manuscripts everywhere at all times of the day, night whatever. He can wake up at 3 am and decide "hey I want to go see manuscript X" walk out of his room take his key and see the manuscript at 3 am. This is quite simply unprecedented or unparalleled. He is the ONLY expert. The ONLY authority for all practical purposes. The letter doesn't have a homosexual reference. This is all quite stupid. But it appeals to people who bought into Carlson's first attempt at this type of anti-homosexual slander. There was this guy who used to make homosexuals pile rocks in one place and move them to another place and then back forever. This is one step removed from this.

[StephenGoranson]

You, SA, have misrepresented what I "accept."

[Secret Alias]

Really so how is it I have missed why Sabar's article on Smith being homosexual "figures" into a letter that has no references to homosexuality? If anything it tells me that the reason Smith read gymnoi as gymnos is owing to the same kind of projection that goes on in the debate ever since. Either the text says "naked man with naked man" or "naked with nakeds." Every expert I ever consulted, and that was at least fifty, Greek professors at leading universities said in effect, whatever Tselikas says is there is there. Literally everyone. When I have time I will produce these references. But there are dozens.

[Secret Alias]

I look forward to Sabar exposing Brad Pitt as gay so I can convince my wife to stop being enamored with him.

[Secret Alias]

And what's with the "suicide" thing? My parents were pro-euthanasia. He had terminal cancer and chose to end his life. Notice how there was no attempt to contextualize that. It was a hit piece plain and simple.

[Secret Alias]

Just for clarity (I hate my job so this beats working). The timeline:

1. the Letter to Theodore is written some time from "at the time of Clement" to "the minute before the manuscript was inscribed in the back of the printed book."
2. Smith reads the book at Mar Saba. = 1958
3. Smith reads the line as "naked man with naked man" = 1958.
4. He publishes, makes theories, doesn't really say a lot about the homosexual thing. "He's hiding something." Ok but what is it he's hiding. "He's gay." Ok let's suppose Sabar shows reason to believe that. "He's gay and he devised some homosexual plot to bring down Christianity through forgery." Really? Wouldn't that involve being exposed as gay and people delving into his personal life that he spent so much time concealing? Does that make sense.
5. People take offense at his discovery. People start saying he's gay. Doesn't that get in the way of his "hiding he's gay" something he did all his life.
6. Tselikas gets around to looking at the manuscript. His conclusions (a) it's a forgery (b) it doesn't say "naked man with naked man" but "naked with nakeds."

What value does Sabar's article figure into this universe? Oh, it's satisfying to vindicate those who previously tried to "expose" Morton Smith's homosexuality. But again, why would someone trying to hide he was gay want to be outed as gay? Makes no sense. And the text doesn't say "naked man with naked man." So Smith triggered his "outing" by discovering a document and reading into it a reference to a gay Jesus when Clement is just saying the same things he says in Stromateis 3 and which were in Hegesippus and repeated by Epiphanius. Just an unfortunate situation. People suck.

[Secret Alias]

In case I didn't show it often enough:



No gay reference. Accent over the iota not the omicron = γυμνοὶ. God's funny. The one thing EVERY non-Greek agrees on is the correctness of Morton Smith's reading of the letter over Agamemnon Tselikas. Pro-forgery, pro-authenticity. It's universal. I wonder why that is? Could it be that we don't want admit we don't have a clue how to read this letters? The idea that Morton Smith reading the accent being over the omicron is preferred over the Greek guy's "take" is classic. Do people have eyes? I personally am the kind of guy who looks for Greeks eating at the Greek restaurant to know whether it's going to worth going there. But what do I know.