Does PARAXARASSETAI say "Smith", as Watson claims it does?
Watson finds a metaphorical link (in English) between PARAXARASSETAI and "Smith". In this he sees a clue that Smith has left behind, indicating he is the author. But this cannot be used as evidence of forgery. Imagine if it were any other scholar, bearing the most common surname in the Anglo-American world, studying a text that contained the word PARAXARASSETAI (or any variants thereof). Would we be compelled to suspect them of forgery? The idea is absurd. Why is it no less absurd in the case of Morton Smith?
Furthermore, the parallel is only drawn because Watson presents the translation of PARAXARASSETAI as "to forge". But this is inaccurate: PARAXARASSETAI more properly, or literally, means "to counterfeit"--deriving from counterfeit coins, not letters or signatures. In English, it is true that letters and signatures are said to be "forged", but not coins. Metal is "forged" in English, but coins are either "stamped" when authentic, or "counterfeited" when not. Watson even seems aware of this, explicating the metaphor in terms of precious and base metals, and so he must beg special pleading to extend the metaphor to texts: "The Greek terminology can be used metaphorically to apply not only to coinage but to literary fabrications." Watson, however, is proposing a modern usage of PARAXARASSETAI in this manner, which is to assume his conclusion (that Smith hints that he was a forger) in the premises (that PARAXARASSETAI means "to forge"). But PARAXARASSETAI does not mean "to forge", in Greek--and "to counterfeit" only means "to forge" in English under the most generous of analogies.
And at any rate, none of this has to do with how the term is used in To Theodore at all. The author of To Theodore is speaking of how the truth of the "true things" is counterfeited, like a coin--not how a text of the "true things" is forged, like a letter! Pseudo-Clement isn't even talking about a gospel text at all here; instead, he's discussing the statements of the Carpocratians about Mark's gospel. It's Watson, and Smith's critics in general, who have forged texts on the brain; our pseudo-Clementine author has nothing of the sort in mind in Theodore I.11-15. While it is true that the subject of the letter is an an interpolated text (the Carpocratian gospel), pseudo-Clement is not using PARAXARESSETAI to describe that text, but rather, he is using it to describe the (spoken) truth, the truth of the "true elements" in the statements of the Carpocratians about the gospel. Watson betrays his mistake when he writes:
In the case of Clement’s letter...the falsification or ‘forgery’ in question is the Carpocratian version of the Secret Gospel. Additions like ‘naked man with naked man’ represent the debasing of precious metal.
But this is simply, flat-out wrong--again, Pseudo-Clement is not referring to the text of the Carpocratian gospel, written or otherwise, when he mentions PARAXARESSETAI. He is referring to the statements the Carpocratians make about the gospel of Mark. The "true things" are contained in these statements about GMk, not in the text of the Carpocratian gospel itself (though it so happens that their gospel contains authentic portions of both SGM and GMk).
Indeed, "true things", being already true, cannot become forged (especially if they are spoken, not written)--but they can become counterfeit, metaphorically speaking, when mixed with falsehoods.
If anything, it is the falsehoods that are forged (when written down, anyway), not the true things, as indicated by the word pseudo-Clement himself uses for these falsehoods: PLASMASI. But our author is not talking about what happens to the falsehoods, spoken or written; he's talking about what happens to the true things. When mixed with falsehoods, they become counterfeit. But not forged.
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