We all love a prize, and a scandal, and a chance to shake our heads when the great and good fall into disgrace. So for the past few weeks, the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize for Literature, has offered excellent entertainment.

Instead of wondering whether this year’s prize would finally go to Philip Roth, we instead had the excitement of asking whether it would be awarded at all. On Friday, we got the answer: The Academy will postpone the 2018 prize until next year. The real comedy, however, is that it has taken accusations of sexual abuse — directed not at a member of the academy, but at the husband of a member — to call the prize into question. It requires very little reflection to see that this international award for literature never had, nor ever could have any credibility at all. It is nonsense.

To recount the scandal in detail would be a red herring, but here is an outline: Katarina Frostenson, a poet, became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1992. Together with her French husband, the photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, she also ran a cultural club, Forum, that receives funding from the Swedish Academy. Amid the “Me Too” movement, 18 women have come forward accusing Mr. Arnault of improper sexual behavior, some taking place at Forum itself.

Eighteen is a recurring number in this story. There are 18 members of the Swedish Academy, which was formed in 1786 to promote the “purity, strength and sublimity of the Swedish language;” only in 1900 was it called on, by Alfred Nobel’s legacy, to choose the finest literary oeuvre of “an idealistic tendency” anywhere in the world, something that obliged the Swedish purists to spend much of their time reading in foreign languages.