Consequently, some scholars doubt the authenticity of the discovery. Jacob Neusner, who knew the late Professor Smith as well as anyone, has recently described this writing as "the forgery of the century. That this epistle apparently (and conveniently) lends a measure of support to Smith's controversial contention that Jesus was a magician, perhaps even a homosexual, only adds to the suspicion that this Clementine epistle could well be a fake. Nevertheless, several learned patristics scholars (such as Henry Chadwick and GWH Lampe) are satisfied that the epistle is genuine. [p. 526, 527]
The other author of this book, Bruce Chilton, happened to publish an article more than a decade later which accused Smith of being a homosexual in a journal edited by Jacob Neusner. It would stand to reason that Neusner already accepted Chilton's undocumented assertions but who could have been Chilton's source for the information if not Neusner himself? Evans could find no better source for information about Smith ten years earlier. Had new information fallen into Chilton's lap outside of Neusner? It seems hardly likely. Neusner is the most likely candidate for this claim although it is by no means a proven fact.
We will start investigating the cause of the dispute between Smith and Neusner in an upcoming post. Nevertheless to give the reader a feeling for the depth of the hatred that Neusner had for his former teacher, I bring forward the following words from a book published in 1998:
[R]eaders [of Gerhardsson's work] missed his careful qualifications, his thoughtful word-choices. In giving the work a negative reading on grounds of an uncritical retrojection of techniques attested only muhc later on into the age of thee Evangelists, I followed the lead of my then-teacher, Morton Smith, with whom I wrote my dissertation just before Gerhardsson's book appeared, and whom I extravagantly admired, but not without solid reason, for his powers of penetrating criticism. To understand Smith's influence we have to identify the particular traits that he cultivated. And to place in perspective Smith's reading of Gerhardsson, we have to take a second look at his principal critic, Morton Smith himself.
Like Arthur Darby Nock, but lacking his perspicacity and cultivation, Smith made his career as a ferocious critic of others. Smith thereby surrounded himself with a protective wall of violent invectiv; what he wished to hide, and for a while succeeded in hiding, was the intellectual vacuum within. Of his entire legacy one book survives today, quite lacking influence but still a model of argument, and a handfull of suggestive but insufficient articles. In all Smith wrote three important contributions to scholarship, one a model of argument and analysis though boradly ignored in the field to which it was devoted, another a pseudo-critical but in fact intellectually slovenly and exploitative monograph, and the third an outright fraud [=the Secret Gospel of Mark--Michael Barber]. But in the early 1960's, when Gerhardsson's book became a target of opportunity to demonstrate his capacity to seize the jugular, no one could have known the reality. I took as my model his sharp pen and his analytical wit, not understanding that Smith had no constructive capacities and would never on his own write an honest and important book....
As to the scholarly fraud [=the Secret Gospel of Mark], who speaks of it any more, or imagines that the work pertains to the study of the New Testament at all? I need not remind readers of this reprint of the scandal of Smith's 'sensational discovery' of the Clement fragment, the original of which no one but Smith was permitted to examine. Purporting, in Smith's report, to demonstrate that the historical Jesus was 'really' a homosexual magician, the work has not outlived its perpetrator. In the end many were silenced--who wanted to get sued?--but few were gulled.
Beyond [his] three major scholarly projects--as I said, a self-certified Ph.D. dissertation that no one in the degree-granting university could evaluate, an exemplary work done under the tutelage of a great scholar but lacking all consquence in scholarly discourse, and a forgery and a fraud, beyond occasional articles of uneven quality but occasional brilliance, Smith produced a few potboilers, on the one side, and a corpus of book reviews of a supercilious and misleading character. And one of these--alas!--dismissed and denied a hearing to Memory and Manuscript, as Gerhardsson says with complete justification, 'in a caricuatured and misleading way.' And let me plead guilty to Gerhardsson's indictment: 'This misprepresentation, and Smith's rather simplistic courter-arguments, were repeated, in even more simplified forms, by countless critics.' I was one of these, and I apologize in word and, here, in deed."
--Jacob Neusner, "Foreword," in Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript. Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity with Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1961; repri., Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998), xxvi-xxvii.
Jeffrey and Carlson of course published books of their own which assumed Smith's homosexuality without producing so much as a single documented source. Was Neusner again the unacknowledged source for these books? It is impossible to say but the pattern of undocumented allegations is very curious. Surely if there were multiple sources someone would come forward and say 'Morton Smith came on to me' or the like.
As such we still have only one real suspect for the source of the rumor and a clear motivation - hatred. That a great number of loose tongues were all willing to publish a sensational claim without so much as a single footnote to support the allegation is very curious. Their source must have been 'impeccable' in their minds. Someone whose authority would leave them with no doubt about the veracity of the claim.
Teachers are supposed to have that effect on students and Neusner did in fact offer up effusive praise for his former teacher through most of the 1970s. But then something happened. We will discuss this later.
In any event, I say let the goyim have Neusner. Our next post will examine Neusner idiotic claim that the rabbinic tradition cannot be dated, a claim interestingly that made Neusner something of a laughing stock in rabbinic scholarship and led him to wage a campaign against a number of detrators. I happen to have a source that there was a saying in Leiden that you knew you hadn't made it as a scholar until you had received a 'I hope you drop dead' letter from Jacob Neusner.
And they say Morton Smith was eccentric, crazy and vindictive. In my own life I have noticed that 'the pot calling the kettle black' is one of the truest clichés.
More to follow ...
