First of all, Watson states "The question is whether the links with Papias are conceivable for Clement, or whether they betray the work of a modern forger who has used the Papias excerpts as a template for his own work." But this is obviously a false dichotomy. As I have repeatedly pointed out, these are not the only alternatives for authorship of To Theodore. A third alternative is that it is the work of an ancient forger, who has used the Papias excerpts as a template for his own work. Nor can I find comprehensible Watson's claim that:
The author here derives from Papias both phraseology and a template for his own very different account of the limitations of Mark’s Gospel. This compositional procedure is more plausibly ascribed to a modern author than to a second-century one.
Why? Standard synoptic source-criticism routinely assumes that GMt and GLk, for example, derive from GMk both a phraseology and a template for their very own different accounts of the gospel. How on earth is this in any way a procedure more modern than ancient?
And the author's continuing reliance on Papias, if demonstrated by Watson, only serves to demonstrate my own claim: that the second/third-century pseudo-Clementine author was composing a textual history for both canonical and secret Mark that had no actual basis in fact. A disciple of Jesus named "Mark" did not compose either gospel, nor was canonical Mark written first. Instead, SGM was written first, in the second century, followed by the canonical revision. The author of To Theodore may very well have Papias in front of him as he tries to spin a more proto-orthodox history for Theodore's benefit. Watson has perhaps performed fine research here, but he (like Smith, ironically) unforunately follows it to the wrong conclusions.
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