The final break that occurred between Jacob Neusner and Morton Smith in 1984 was the beginning of the end for the Mar Saba document. As we have noted at this blog for the last few posts Jacob Neusner has to be considered the prime source for the claim that Morton Smith was a homosexual. We must be careful to point out that it is impossible to prove such an assertion. Nevertheless Craig Evans among other has made it clear that opponents of the Letter to Theodore found it hard to get any direct testimony about Morton Smith's character outside of Neusner and no one can doubt that Neusner changed from idolizing Smith in the 1970s to reviling him the late 1980s.
Most investigations have limited their focus to Jacob Neusner the scholar. Yet I happened to have stumbled across a book that Neusner co-wrote with his son in 1995 entitled the Price of Excellence: Universities in Conflict in the Cold War Era which actually shocked me with its radical conservative - some might say race baiting - rhetoric. Of course Jacob Neusner manages also to attack his former teacher Morton Smith with the usual litany of accusations (promoting homosexuality, Smith being a fraud, charlatan and perpetrating a 'hoax'). Yet all of what we have learned from Neusner gay baiting of Smith pales in comparison to the vitriol he heaps upon blacks. Here is a sample:
A sign of this change would come only later in the 1980s and reach its full exposure in the 1990s, with the naturalization of bigotry leading even to open anti-Semitism on the campus under the auspices of black studies. Like the Weimar universities of the late 1920s and the Nazified universities of the 1930s, schools such as Howard University sponsored anti-Semitic events. Alongside, books and student newspapers were burned and suppressed, Alongside, books and student newspapers were burned and suppressed, free speech penalized, and strict rules enforced about what might and might not be said — anything lunatic about the Jews and the Pope, but nothing that radical feminists or blacks would find "insensitive."
Including black studies in universities now requires provisions for blacks-only studies and facilities, excluding nonblack professors and facilities and nonblack students. A once-respectable academic field sponsors racism and bigotry of a vicious character never before seen in so vast a sector of the American academy. Ceasing to exclude blacks from tax-supported activities, the promise of the 1960s, now imposed upon universities the requirement to finance black bigotry wherever black students and professors wish to assert themselves. Special pleading replaces learning, politically correct opinions substitute for free debate in reasoned arguments, proscribed attitudes substitute for free inquiry, and a reign of intellectual terror has descended on many, particularly the most advanced and most liberal universities. Indeed, the higher on the scale of the elite universities, the more restrictive and dictatorial the racist regime. Consequently, what began as an effort to improve the curriculum for all by making a place for African-American history, literature, and culture has now shaded over into a sustained campaign of black racism against whites in general, and Catholics and Jews in particular. No one has yet calculated the loss of moral authority that has accrued to black America. [p. 203, 204]
The point here is what began as an assumption that Jacob Neusner simply had it in for Morton Smith has given way to something far more sinister - could it be that Neusner had it with the liberal establishment which viewed him as a laughing stock?
Now I haven't determined what Neusner's political views were before the break with Smith. Nevertheless there are certain signs which I will bring forward in upcoming posts that point to a radical shift to the right in the 1980's. What is worth noting for the moment is Neusner's attempts to gloss over the traditional differences which separated Jews and Catholics. It is what helped be named in a Time magazine story as 'the Pope's rabbi.' This is the result of an important political calculus which is most clearly witnessed in the personal success of his son and co-author of the Price of Excellence, Noam Neusner (pictured above with former president George W Bush). Indeed look carefully at his resume:
Prior to starting his own firm, Neusner was President George W. Bush's primary speechwriter on domestic policy matters, including tax relief, Medicare reform, energy and the environment. He also served as Joshua Bolten's Director of Communications and Strategic Planning at the Office of Management & Budget, a cabinet-level agency in charge of producing the $2.6 trillion federal budget. He oversaw the agency's external and internal communications, including press relations, message development, speeches, and the writing, editing, and production of the 400-page budget.
At the White House, Neusner also has served as liaison to the Jewish community, and used that position to energize the President's ongoing relationship with the community, helping to generate a one-third increase in support in the 2004 election.
I have even read articles where Neusner the son praises the Tea Party. Of course the 'bundling' together of a wide spectrum of 'conservative religious groups' was the hallmark of all successful Republican presidential campaigns. Yet it is impossible to fit Jacob Neusner the scholar as a 'Jewish conservative' when he doesn't even believe that one can trust the rabbinic literature account with any historical reliability.
The point is that my suspicion is now that the transformation of the Mar Saba document into road kill for the current American 'culture wars' can be viewed in a microcosm in the career of its most vocal critic - Jacob Neusner. I don't believe that Neusner could care less about the question of authenticity. The discovery seemed to embody Morton Smith and all that Smith represented. I can't sift through Neusner's professional history just yet but his website brings forward a clear gap in his teaching career just before he accepted the teaching position at Bard:
1968-1990 Brown University. 1968-1975: Professor of Religious Studies. 1975-1982: University Professor, Professor of Religious Studies, and Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Judaic Studies. 1982-1990: University Professor and Ungerleider Distinguished Scholar of Judaic Studies.
1989- Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ). Member. (In residence: 1989-1990). School of Historical Studies.
1990-2000 University of South Florida. Distinguished Research Professor of Religious Studies.
1992- Clare Hall, Cambridge University. Life Member. (In residence: 1992)
1994- Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. 1994-1999: Professor of Religion. From 2000 -2006: Research Professor of Religion and Theology. Senior Fellow, Institute of Advanced Theology. 2006- Distinguished Service Professor of the History and Theology of Judaism
Smith was still alive when Neusner left Brown. But what were the circumstances of his departure? It is clearly too early to determine that with any degree of certainty but it is interesting that Neusner describes his time at Brown as a 'catastrophe' in an article written shortly after he finally got a paid position again at Bard:
When Brown made its offer - start a graduate program immediately, take a full professorship at age 35! - I accepted on the spot. It was a catastrophic error, one I regretted nearly from the outset, except for one consideration, which was all that mattered. Providence was an ideal situation for raising our family. As soon as our fourth and last child was nearing college age, we left. Brown from 1968 through 1989 never offered much intellectual stimulation. In place of Penner and Smith I found no one of philosophical depth or methodological sophistication. In place of Dartmouth's New Testament professor, Robin Scroggs, with whom I studied Greek and from whom I learned much else, they had an unproductive and anti-Christian Josephus scholar of German origin and education, who despised the Jews and Judaism only less than he hated Christians and Christianity. In place of Fred Berthold, one of the academy's exemplary citizens, I came among politicians and conspirators, people who had no important scholarly program for themselves and who were quick to take coffee breaks and long lunches and hours in the library reading newspapers and who happily accepted every committee assignment they could finagle; they would boast they'd never missed a Brown faculty meeting in decades. I never went. I never fit in.
At Brown I accomplished my goals despite a strange and arid environment. I can say nothing good of my 'colleagues' there; I did my best to work despite them. This I did through my graduate teaching and an on-going program of organizing conferences from year to year, to which I invited everyone I could imagine; foreign lecture and travel, from 1971 onward; attending conferences elsewhere organizing multi-year study sessions at the American Academy of Religion; and, above all, endless telephone calls with interesting, patient people. As the years unfolded and our children grew more self-reliant, I took every chance I could to get out of Providence, and, when at home, I spent at Brown only those hours I had to for teaching and office hours; I taught my graduate seminar at home. Brown was the color of my paycheck, but not of my mood, ever. [Formative Judaism: Current issues and arguments 1996]
I am a man who lives by his instincts and I don't buy this account of Neusner's departure from Brown. It seems to be instead an attempt to put his spin on the events once he got paid employment again. Let's not forget that he also wrote the book with his son blaming blacks for destroying education and then later to emerge something of a darling of conservative Christian religious scholars. Something happened at Brown that he's not saying. The next step is to find the name of that 'anti-Christian Josephus scholar of German origin and education, who despised the Jews and Judaism only less than he hated Christians and Christianity.' Neusner is attacking him after the pattern we know with Smith. He knows something. It's time to find out who he is and what he knows.
And by the way, I must have went through forty books and articles by Neusner tonight and I keep seeing that the same writing is used in three or four different books by the same author. Not a crime but an explanation for how Neusner authored so many books. An example from Google of this phenomenon in the course of writing this post.
