But the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be and are (καὶ φαίνεται καὶ ἔστιν) lies. Now the true exegesis, and that which accords with the true philosophy ... [to Theod. 3.17, 18]
As I have noted in my previous post, as most scholars of earliest Christianity are Philistines they did not recognize that καὶ φαίνεται καὶ ἔστιν is a category lifted from the near contemporary orator Hermogenes of Tarsus. Hermogenes puts forward three categories of 'forcefulness' (δεινότης) among the orators:
In the περὶ ἰδεῶν II. c. 41 Hermogenes ranks Lysias, with Isaeos and Hypereides, next to Demosthenes in mastery of the πολιτικὸς λόγος. In his chapter περὶ δεινότητος (περὶ ἰδ. II. 9) he says that there are three kinds of δεινότης, --that which is and seems, that which seems and is not, and that which is but does not seem. The last, or hidden, δεινότης is, he thinks, most perfectly exemplified in Lysias. [Richard Claverhouse Jebb the Attic Orators p. 196]
If Demosthenes is the greatest of orators (i.e. that which is and seems) and Lysias (that which is but does not seem = 'hidden force') then, as Ian Rutherford noted for us earliest - the sophists assume the rank of that which is and is not which exactly what is referenced by Clement at the end of the Letter to Theodore.
Morton Smith might have been an expert on a lot of things but he certainly lacked the subtlety to weave this subtle understanding into a supposedly forged text. Not a single 'expert' before us has ever noticed the coupling of 'that which is and seems false' (to Theod. 3:17) and 'the true philosophy' in the line which follows (to Theod. 3:18). While the juxtaposition of the sophists on the one hand and Socrates the expounder of the 'true philosophy' is the most familiar formulation of this conception to most readers, it is worth noting that as early as Philo of Alexandria the 'stereotype' was updated to contemporary Alexandria:
But Moses does not think it right to incline either to the right or to the left, or in short to any part of the earthly Edom; but rather to proceed along the middle way, which he with great propriety calls the royal road, (Num. 20:17) for since God is the first and only God of the universe, so also the road to him, as being the king's road, is very properly denominated royal; and this royal road you must consider to be philosophy, not that philosophy which the existing sophistical crowd of men pursues (for they, studying the art of words in opposition to truth, have called crafty wickedness, wisdom, assigning a divine name to wicked action), but that which the ancient company of those men who practised virtue studied, rejecting the persuasive juggleries of pleasure, and adopting a virtuous and austere study of the honourable - this royal road, which we have stated to be genuine and true philosophy [Posterity of Cain 101, 102]
In case the reader finds it difficult to follow at home, as Bruce W. Winter noted in his Philo and Paul Among the Sophists Philo is referencing
the sophist group of present day people', denying that their teaching contains true philosophy, namely the utterance and word of God. He supplies three reasons for this. Firstly, they 'practised arts of speech to use against the truth', that is, 'rhetorical art'. Secondly, 'they have given the name of wisdom to rascality'. Thirdly, they have conferred 'on a sorry work a divine name'. Philo notes, with the use of another strong adversative, how present-day sophists differ both from the 'ancient band of aspirants', who pursued with rigour the study of philosophy, and the followers of Moses. Again we see that Philo speaks not anachronistically but of his own contemporaries. [p. 66, 67]
In other words, Clement is establishing in the Letter to Theodore what we have demonstrated in previous posts to be a pattern in his writings - updating established Platonic formulas with contemporary terminology from influential writers and orators.
We have now demonstrated that this is only one of many references which religious scholars have missed because of their basic unfamiliarity with contemporary Greek literary figures. The question which is now before is whether Morton Smith could have planted these subtle allusions to Hermogenes of Tarson and Maximus of Tyre (see previous posts) and not mentioned it anywhere in his writings? What purpose would could this possibly have served?
We have already shown that Maximus of Tyre's 'naked with naked' (i.e. an allusion to Gorgias 523d) was undoubtedly the real context of Theodore's original inquiry. It is difficult to imagine the conspiratorial mindset which can account for Morton Smith not recognizing this contemporary allusion. Was Smith falsely devising a 'libertine hypothesis' in order to shield what is now clearly an original dialog between two educated Platonists? Now that we have uncovered the existence of yet another allusion to a contemporary writer unrecognized by Morton Smith (or anyone else for that matter) I don't see how the hoax hypothesis can possibly carry on.
Only one question remains to be answered - is hate and the personal animus against Morton Smith sustained by an octogenarian scholar of Judaism and his students enough to continue this silliness going on indefinitely? Is the world ready to see the Letter to Theodore for what it really is - the greatest literary discovery of the twentieth century ...
