Starting to Have Strong Doubts About Ariel Sabar's Timeline

[Secret Alias]

It seems to be all manipulated evidence. Have to do more research. It's like he knew where he wanted to go and unlike his predecessors knew how to write well so people were happy to go along for the ride.

[Secret Alias]

Really great writer. That's what made me suspicious. He's too nuanced with his word choice. If you had the facts you'd just lay the mack down. Smack down.

[StephenGoranson]

One of your falsehoods:
claiming he found no gay relationship
but he did explicitly claim
and Atlantic editors went with his evidence
as already mentioned.
Not that such is crucial for NT study, but a caution for sloppiness.

[Secret Alias]

Who was his gay partner?

[StephenGoranson]

An example, Sabar wrote:
"In the late 1970s, Smith had a brief relationship with an openly gay Columbia student."
As I have written before, and before, I assume Sabar and his editors are reasonably reliable.

[Secret Alias]

These were the people on this boat. So Morton Smith must have been on the boat. It was filled with members of the Institute

https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/archives/uploa ... 951-52.pdf

The activities of most of the senior members are recorded in other reports, particularly in that on the Agora Excavations, whe.re the gre~;er part
of their work was done. A copy of Norman Herz's geolog1cal paper, Stones
of the Athenian Agora," proposing a standard terminology for the use of
archaeologists, is on file with the other School Papers o~ 1952. Professor
Lattimore remained in Greece until mid-August, completmg three chapters
of his study of Herodotos. The Reverend Morton Smith trav.elled ':idel.y
throughout the Greek mainland and islands and visited Constantmople m h1s
search for MSS. of St. Isidore of Pelusium, Maximus the Confessor, and
other mediaeval writers. He met with most gratifying success, and before
his departure at the end of August had recorded, photographed, and st.udied a
very large body of material. Professor Wallace, holding a Gugge~he1m Fellowship, worked during the spring on problems of Euboean h1story and
numismatics.

[Secret Alias]

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

And? This is proof of a gay relationship? I remind you of Sabar's obvious efforts to lead the evidence to the same conclusion:

This is where he got elements to write this "gay" sounding relationship thing in his article:
"He and Smith had met in Jerusalem, apparently in the 1940s, and reunited in 1951, when Smith took a year’s research leave from Brown. Madjoucoff accompanied Smith to monastery libraries around Greece, and in August 1952, according to passenger manifests, they boarded the SS Excambion together, in Piraeus, for an 18-day voyage to Boston. In Providence, Smith found Madjoucoff an apartment around the corner from his. But shortly after Brown told Smith that his time there was up, Madjoucoff changed his last name, married a woman he’d met through his church, and moved to the suburbs."
But in the obituary which prompted his interview:
His father remained in Jerusalem where he served the Orthodox church. Atanas immigrated to the USA in 1952 with sponsorship from his life-long friend Prof. Morton Smith, then professor of theology at Columbia University who he met in Jerusalem. Upon entry to this country, Atanas decided to change his last name from Madjoucoff to Salem to reflect the city of his birth. He soon moved to Providence, RI and acquired the nickname Tony.
Sabar changes the chronology to "sexualize" the relationship. From:

1. change of name when Atanas enters USA then
2. move to Providence RI

In Sabar's manipulated chronology

1. entry into USA
2. Morton Smith "setting him up in an apartment" in Rhodes Island "around the corner from him" [= sexualized trope, what Parisian men do for their mistresses]
3. name change with an apparent change of sexual identity [homosexuality to heterosexuality]

I will bet you whatever amount you want that Madjoucoff did not have sexual relations with Morton Smith. Why does Sabar try so hard to make it seem as if he did? Because he found nothing.

[Secret Alias]

If he had proof of a gay relationship he wouldn't be wasting his time finessing the evidence with clever phrasing. Get the facts down, give the smack down, lay the mack down. It all looks like a collage of painted up nothing. Three years of digging. One name. A devout Christian refuge who married less than three years after coming to the United States.

[StephenGoranson]

When I compare what I have read by Sabar and in the Atlantic
with posts from Secret Alias
I do tend to think the former usually more reliable.

[Secret Alias]

Reliable? You mean conforming to eisegesis.