Are There Really Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels? A Refutation of Morton Smith.

• Author: Cohen, Shaye J.D.

This book is a disgrace to its author and a disgrace to its publisher. The scholarship is shoddy, the writing repetitious, the tone vituperative, and the argumentation flawed. "Do not think these harsh judgments exaggerated or abusive. They are well merited and well founded" (p. 2).(1)

The ostensible point of this book (hereafter, Refutation), as indicated by the title, is that Morton Smith's Ph.D. dissertation, completed at the Hebrew University in 1945, defended in 1948, and published in 1951 as Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels,(2) was bungled: that it was " . . . a dissertation of . . . surpassingly commonplace triviality, offering . . . exceptionally ineffable platitudes" (p. 38). "Smith introduced questions he did not answer, took for granted facts that were not facts, confused his categories in a memorable display of conceptual bungling, and proved everything and its opposite in a mess of contradiction and confusion" (p. 39). This rhetoric notwithstanding, Refutation bills itself as "a civil, academic reply to [Smith's] ideas" (p. 39).

In fact, the book is meant to be a refutation, not just of Smith's doctoral dissertation, but of Smith's entire life and career. The failure of the dissertation, Neusner argues, presages a career that was "tragic" and "fruitless" (p. 157), not to mention "sad and arid" (p. xiii). Smith was "a clever man - not brilliant, in conceptual matters a complete bungler, but clever" (p. 19), "clever but not very smart" (pp. 21, 31), a "second rate mind" (p. 34), "a rather ordinary, and in fact, quite limited, mind" (p. 31), "not very smart" (p. 14), "not a very painstaking or patient scholar, hasty in drawing conclusions and sloppy in presenting them, superficial" (p. 157), "a bungler at problems of a philosophical character" (p. 12, cf. p. 31), "ignorant and incompetent" (p. 38). "In his last years he was generally regarded as a crank, and, by the end, little short of a crackpot. He died a figure of ridicule, lacking influence outside of his own personal sect" (p. 25). "Smith knew two terms of supreme abuse: know-nothing and fundamentalist. He knew whereof he cursed, for he himself was both" (p. 25). Refutation is filled with such ad hominem judgments.

Why such vituperation? Early in his career Neusner and Smith were very close. In the autobiographical introduction (pp. 6-9 and 15-25, annoyingly repetitive) Neusner explains that Smith was "the first, the only, and the last authentic teacher I ever had" (p. 7, cf. p. x). "For an important chapter in my scholarly career, from 1959-1973, I was Smith's student and disciple" (p. 17). But suddenly in 1973 Smith told Neusner that he no longer intended to read any of his books (pp. 19, 22). Undeterred, our author continued to curry favor with the master. In 1975 he organized and produced a massive four-volume Festschrift in his honor, in the preface to which he called Smith "one of the great scholarly masters of this generation."(3) In 1979, when asked to name the three spiritual books that had been the most important influence on his life, Neus-ner named in first place Tannaitic Parallels to the Gospels, calling it "the most beautifully argued work of historical reason I know"(4) (for some reason this quote nowhere appears in the book under review). But then, at the meetings of the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature in 1979, Smith ostentatiously walked out of the auditorium while Neusner was giving a plenary address (p. 22). At the 1984 A.A.R.-S.B.L. meeting, after Neusner gave another plenary lecture, Smith took the lectern and denounced Neusner's translation of the Palestinian Talmud (the Yerushalmi) as "a serious misfortune for Jewish studies." He then proceeded to walk up and down the central aisle of the auditorium, distributing copies of a book review that substantiated his denunciation.(5) Refutation is apparently Neusner's attempt to get even - an obituary that brings closure to an intense and troubled relationship.

Why did Smith break with Neusner? Just before the 1984 meeting, Smith explained to me that, because he had been instrumental in launching Neusner's career, he felt responsible for the "slovenliness" of Neusner's scholarship, which had grown worse over the years. Neusner had proven to be incorrigible in this matter, and therefore Smith wanted to dissociate himself publicly from his student. Whether Smith's own explanation of his actions is correct - and, even if it be correct, whether other motives contributed as well - I leave for others to determine. Refutation gives us Neusner's side. Neusner cannot conceive that any failing on his part occasioned Smith's outburst. On the contrary. He conjectures that he and Smith "parted company for substantive, scholarly reasons" (pp. 24-25; cf. pp. x, 5-6, 39). By 1973 Neusner had reached the conclusion "that no conventional, narrative history could emerge from the rabbinic literature" (p. 20). According to Neusner, Smith could not tolerate this...