The Development of the Rumor that Morton Smith was Gay (the Only Serious Scholars to Ever Make Such a Claim in Print)

1994  Jacob Neusner

... tell the world he was a homosexual magician, as the late Morton Smith did, and your day is made ... [t]he very quest (of attacking the historical Jesus) met its defining disgrace by Morton Smith, whose "historical" results—Jesus was "really" a homosexual magician—depended upon a selective believing in whatever Smith thought was historical....[but] truth does matter, even if, in respect to Jesus, some imagine that it does not. Still, in defense of the question as Smith conducted it, the charge that each "biographer" of Jesus produces a Jesus in his own image is wide of the mark, since no one ever accused Smith of being a magician. [Jacob Neusner, "Who Needs the Historical Jesus?" an Essay-Review, Bulletin For Biblical Research 4 1994 p. 115, 116] A similar argument is developed in Neusner's 1995 book the Price of Excellence p. 78

2000  Donald Akenson (Neusner Protege)

"What we have here (in Secret Mark) is a nice ironic gay joke at the expense of all of the self-important scholars who not only miss the irony, but believe that this alleged piece of gospel comes to us in the first-known letter of the great Clement of Alexandria." [Donald Akenson Saint Saul p 88 and Surpassing wonder: the Invention of the Bible and the Talmuds p. 597 (the same passage is reused twice)] Bart Ehrman among others interprets Akenson's comments as inferring that Smith was gay. (Lost Christianities p. 267)

2006  Bruce Chilton (Neusner Protege)

"In 1960 Morton Smith, a professor at Columbia University, announced the existence of this document at a meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, a year and a half after he said he found it in a monastic library near Jerusalem. Press coverage proved wide and instantaneous, because "Secret Mark" climaxes with an evocative image: A young man who wore only "a linen cloth over his naked body" spends the night with Jesus, who "taught him the mystery of the kingdom of God." That proved too good a lure to pass up: What reader of the Gospels could fail to wonder whether Jesus engaged in the sexually charged initiation that "Secret Mark" describes? Smith himself, a homosexual at a time when homophobia ran high, had little doubt." [Unmasking a False Gospel, Bruce Chilton, October 25, 2006, NY Sun]  The same article is reprinted virtually in the same form in a journal edited by Jacob Neusner

2009  Craig Evans (Neusner Associate)

"He (Morton Smith) himself was gay, which was a closely guarded secret in the 1950s. (no footnote) He had been denied tenure at Brown University and may have wanted to demonstrate his intellectual superiority by pulling off something like this.” Evans picked up Carlson's book and searched through it until he came to the quote he was looking for." [Lee Stroebel, the Case for the Historical Jesus Google Books did not provide page numbers]