Morton Smith

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For the former Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church in America, see Morton H. Smith.
Not to be confused with Morty Smith.
Robert Morton Smith
Morton Smith, teaching a graduate seminar on Paul at Columbia University in 1989.
Born(1915-05-28)May 28, 1915
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
DiedJuly 11, 1991(1991-07-11) (aged 76)
Manhattan, New York, U.S.
OccupationHistorian
Academic background
EducationHarvard University
Hebrew University (Ph.D.)
Harvard Divinity School (Th.D.)
Academic work
DisciplineBiblical scholar
InstitutionsColumbia University
Main interestsMar Saba letter
Notable worksJesus the Magician

Robert Morton Smith (May 28, 1915 – July 11, 1991)[1][2][3] was an American professor of ancient history at Columbia University. He is best known for his reported discovery of the Mar Saba letter, a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a Secret Gospel of Mark, during a visit to the monastery at Mar Saba in 1958. This letter fragment has had many names, from The Secret Gospel through The Mar Saba Fragment and the Theodoros.

Biography

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Smith was born in Philadelphia on May 28, 1915.[1][2][3] He attended the Academy of the New Church.[1] He received his A.B. (English major, magna cum laude) from Harvard College in 1936 and Bachelor of Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) from Harvard Divinity School in 1940.[1] Smith received a Ph.D. in classical philology from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1948 and a Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School in 1957.[1] He was ordained deacon (1945) and priest (1946) of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and worked in parishes until 1950.[1]

He taught at Brown University (1950–55), Drew University (1955–56) and Columbia University from 1957.[1] He became professor emeritus in 1985 and continued as a lecturer in religion until 1990.[4]

On July 11, 1991 Smith died in his home at the age of 76 due to heart failure.[5][6] Other sources have reported the cause of death to be suicide.[7] At the time of his death Smith was working on a project titled Paul the Possessed.[4]

Smith was well-known for his sharp wit when it came to religious debates. He made regular scholarly contributions in many fields, including but not limited to Greek and Latin classics, New Testament, Patristics, Second Temple Judaism, and Rabbinic Judaism.[8] Despite the numerous accusations of forgery against Smith's finding, Smith was seen as a dedicated scholar when it came to research. He devoted fifteen years of his life to just studying his finding of the Secret Gospel.[9]

Mar Saba letter

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Main article: Mar Saba letter
Ancient Mar Saba monastery, founded in the fifth century.

In 1941, Smith, at age 26, was on a trip to the holy land with the Harvard Divinity School. Due to issues relating to the war, he was stuck in Jerusalem, where he made acquaintances with a leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, who gave him a tour of various places, one of which happened to be the Mar Saba monastery. While there, Smith was given access to the libraries of the monastery. Years later, in 1958, having landed a teaching career at Columbia, Smith was awarded a sabbatical. With his sabbatical, Smith decided to return to Mar Saba, having since become very interested in the Mar Saba library. He recalled that during his first visit, the library had been a terrible mess, and according to Smith no one had bothered to catalog it.[10]

Smith reported he found the manuscript in the Mar Saba monastery in 1958, photographed it carefully, and then left the book where he found it. He first publicized the discovery in 1960 but, due to various delays, his main publications on the subject did not come out until 1973.

Mar Saba is a Greek Orthodox monastery overlooking the Kidron Valley in the West Bank east of Bethlehem. In 1973 Smith published a book in which he wrote that he had discovered a previously unknown letter of Clement of Alexandria (c.150 - c. 215) while cataloging documents there in the summer of 1958.

Color photo of page 2 of the Mar Saba letter in which quotations from the Secret Gospel of Mark are made.

Right from the start, some scholars voiced the opinion that the letter is not authentic, and that it was either an ancient or medieval forgery. In 1975, Quentin Quesnell published a lengthy article in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly,[11] where he suggested that Smith had forged the document himself, and then photographed his alleged forgery. An incensed Smith issued a furious rebuttal,[12] whereupon Quesnell disclaimed any personal accusations against Smith.[13]

In 1985 in his Strange Tales Per Beskow of Lund University cast doubt on the Gospel. Smith responded by threatening to sue the publisher, Fortress Press of Philadelphia, "for a million dollars" and the publisher amended the offending paragraph.[14]

Smith is featured discussing the Mar Saba letter in the 1984 Channel 4 documentary, Jesus: The Evidence.[15]

Contribution to Old Testament studies

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Smith's contribution to Old Testament studies was contained in his Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament (1971). Using form criticism to reconstruct the social background to the Old Testament, Smith advanced the proposal that two parties had vied for supremacy in ancient Israel, the first composed of those which worshipped many gods of which Yahweh was chief, while the other, the "Yahweh-alone" faction, was largely the party of the priests of Jerusalem, who wished to establish a monopoly for Yahweh. In monarchic Judah the Yahweh-alone party were a permanent minority; although sometimes able to win over a king like Josiah to their cause. Meanwhile, the population at large, including most of the kings, remained stubbornly polytheistic, worshipping the same gods as their neighbours in Moab, Ammon etc. In the post-Exilic period the idea of Yahweh as the only god of Israel finally triumphed, but a new division emerged, between the separatists, who wished the Jews to remain strictly apart from their neighbours, (this separation being defined in terms of purity), and the assimilationists who wished for normal relations with them. Ultimately, by the late Persian/early Hellenistic period, the purists won, the modern version of the Hebrew Bible was written, and a recognisably modern Judaism emerged.[16]

Smith was admired and feared for his extraordinary ability to look at familiar texts in unfamiliar ways, to re-open old questions, to pose new questions, and to demolish received truths. He practiced the "hermeneutics of suspicion" to devastating effect. His answers are not always convincing but his questions cannot be ignored.

— Shaye J. D. Cohen[17]

Publications

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Books
  • Smith, Morton (1951). Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels. JBL Monograph Series. Vol. 6. Philadelphia: Society of Biblical Literature – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton (1960). The Ancient Greeks. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press – via Open Library.
  • Hadas, Moses; Smith, Morton (1965). Heroes and Gods: Spiritual Biographies in Antiquity. Religious Perspectives. Vol. 13. Fereport, NY: Books for Libraries Press. ISBN 0-8369-1880-0 – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton (1971). Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-02986-1 – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton (1973). Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-13490-7.
  • Smith, Morton (1973). The Secret Gospel the discovery and interpretation of the Secret Gospel according to Mark. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-067411-3 – via Open Library.
  • Bickerman, Elias; Smith, Morton (1976). The Ancient History of Western Civilization. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-040668-2 – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton (1978). Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God?. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-067412-1 – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton (1980). Hope and History, an Exploration. World Perspectives. Vol. 54. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-013991-9 – via Open Library.
  • Smith, Morton; Hoffmann, R. Joseph, eds. (1989). What the Bible Really Says. San Francisco: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9780879754686 – via Open Library.
Papers

Collected in Studies in the Cult of Yahweh [edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen] (Brill, Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, v. 130)

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Jeffery 2007 pp. 149–151
  2. ^ a b Neusner, Jacob (1975). "Christianity, Judaism, and other Greco-Roman Cults. Part 1: New Testament". In Neusner, Jacob (ed.). Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty. Vol. 1, New Testament. Leiden: E.J. Brill. p. ix.
  3. ^ a b Calder III, William M. (1994). "Smith, Morton". In Briggs, Jr., Ward W. (ed.). Biographical Dictionary of North American Classicists. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 600. ISBN 9780313245602.
  4. ^ a b Cohen, Shaye J. D. (1992). "Morton Smith (1915-1991)". Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research. 58: 37–40. ISSN 0065-6798. JSTOR 3622627.
  5. ^ "Morton Smith, Columbia Professor And Ancient-Religion Scholar, 76". The New York Times. 1991-07-13. Archived from the original on 2024-11-29. Retrieved 2025-09-30.
  6. ^ "Morton Smith; 'Secret Gospel' Discoverer". Los Angeles Times. 1991-07-20. Retrieved 2025-09-30.
  7. ^ Sabar, Ariel (2024-03-08). "The 'Secret' Gospel and a Scandalous New Episode in the Life of Jesus". The Atlantic. ISSN 2151-9463. Retrieved 2025-09-30.
  8. ^ Ehrman 2003 p. 70
  9. ^ Ehrman 2003 p. 74
  10. ^ Erhman 2003 p. 71
  11. ^ Quesnell, Quentin (1975). "The Mar Saba Clementine: A Question of Evidence". Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 37: 48–67. JSTOR 43715268.
  12. ^ Smith, Morton (1976). "On the Authenticity of the Mar Saba Letter of Clement". Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 38: 196–199. JSTOR 43714173.
  13. ^ Quesnell, Quentin (1976). "Reply to Smith". Catholic Biblical Quarterly. 38: 200–203. JSTOR 43714174.
  14. ^ Beskow, Per. "Modern Mystifications of Jesus". In Burkett, Delbert (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. p. 460. doi:10.1002/9781444327946.ch28. ISBN 9781444327946.
  15. ^ Wallis, Richard (2016-01-27). "Channel 4 and the declining influence of organized religion on UK television. The case of Jesus: The Evidence". Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. 36 (4): 668–688. doi:10.1080/01439685.2015.1132821. ISSN 0143-9685.
  16. ^ Pietersma, Albert (1972). "Review of Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament". Journal of Biblical Literature. 91 (4): 550–552. doi:10.2307/3263695. ISSN 0021-9231. JSTOR 3263695.
  17. ^ Smith, Morton (1996). Cohen, Shaye J.D. (ed.). Studies in the Cult of Yahweh: Volume 1. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world. Vol. 130. E. J. Brill. p. Dust jacket. ISBN 90-04-10477-1.

Sources

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