A Brief Introduction to the PROBLEMS Inherent With Our Existing Understanding of Who or What Clement of Alexandria Was

I am trying to watch the Grammy's with my wife but I wanted to go beyond my iron clad proof that the Hypotyposes were not authentically Clementine. Our whole understanding of who or what 'Titus Flavius Clemens' of Alexandria represents is not nearly as firmly founded as many of us have been led to believe.

Let's start our discussion with one of my crazy theories. I have never been convinced that 'Titus Flavius Clemens' is the real name of the author of the Clementine material. I have written about this before. The 'real Titus Flavius Clemens' was a senator put to death by Domitian allegedly for becoming a Jewish proselyte. A wide body of Alexandrian material was re-baptized under the name 'Titus Flavius Clemens' and transformed into a witness for an early and influential Roman Church in the first century.

I am not just thinking of the First and Second Epistles of (Titus Flavius) Clement to the Corinthians but also his treatise on Virginity as well as the Pseudo-Clementine Literature.

I can't explain who the original author of much of this material was other than that he was undoubtedly an early Alexandrian Patriarch. It is worth noting that there is no internal evidence from either Clementine Epistle identifying the author as actually being named 'Clement.'

Not only was 1 Clement bound as part of the Codex Alexandrianus, appearing immediately after the familiar texts of the New Testament, there is a clear Alexandrian character to the so-called Pseudo-Clementine literature. Not only is the material universally regarded as being developed in Egypt, something else struck as noteworthy about Eusebius' testimony regarding this tradition in his Church History: "It must not be overlooked that there is a second epistle said to be from Clement's pen, but I have no reason to suppose that it was well known like the first one, since I am not aware that the early fathers made any use of it. A year or two ago other long and wordy treatises were put forward as Clement's work. They contain alleged dialogues with Peter and Apion, but there is no mention whatever of them by early writers, nor do they preserve in its purity the stamp of apostolic orthodoxy." (Historia Ecclesiastica III 38)

Apion is identified in the Pseudo-Clementine literature and elsewhere as being a native Alexandrian. Here is what is written in the Jewish Encyclopedia:

A Greek grammarian and sophist of Alexandria, noted for his bitter hatred of the Jews; born in the Great Oasis of Egypt between 20 and 30 B.C., died probably at Rome between 45 and 48. As Joel ("Angriffe des Heidenthums," etc., p. 8) points out, his name, derived from the Egyptian bull-god Apis, indicates his Egyptian origin. He was surnamed also Pleistonikides, or son of Pleistonikes (Suidas, and in his epitaph in "Corpus Inscript. Græc." iii., addenda 4742b), "the man of many victories"; also Mochthos ("the industrious one"). Apion himself claimed to have been born in Alexandria (see Willrich, "Juden und Griechen vor d. Makkabäischen Erhebung," p. 172), but it seems that he was only brought thither when very young, and educated in the house of Didymus the Great, the grammarian (born 63 B.C., died about 1). He was a pupil of the centenarian Euphranor, while Apollonius, son of Archibius, was his pupil rather than his teacher. When Theon, head of the Homeric grammar school at Alexandria, died, Apion succeeded him in that position

It is difficult to know where 'Clement' could have been identified as 'combating' Apion other than Alexandria. I tend to view Josephus' Against Apion as pseudepigraphal. As such the tradition behind the work of 'Josephus' against Apion might be related to those passing under the name of 'Clement' in Eusebius' time. Whoever the original author was he was undoubtedly Alexandrian as was the original author(s) of the two Epistles of 'Clement.'

So much then for the first or second century Alexandrian figure now identified as 'Titus Flavius Clemens OF ROME.

When we turn to the preservation of specifically Alexandrian material under the same name 'Titus Flavius Clemens' we see a very similar difficulty. There is a wide variety of material written by more than one historical individual all ascribed to one person who happens to share the name of the legendary senator that became a proselyte to Jerusalem.

Let's begin with the text we are about to examine Quis Dives Salvetur. I am not in any way disputing that the same person who wrote this work wrote the Stromateis. Nevertheless it is worth noting what Barnard says about the two sole surviving manuscript:

The manuscripts in which this homily is preserved afford no evidence of the authorship. They are only two in number, one of the eleventh century preserved in the Escurial Library (Class-mark 'omega' III.19) in Spain and a copy of it made in the sixteenth century, and preserved in the Vatican Library at Rome (Vat. Gr. 623). In both MSS this writing follows the nineteen homilies of Origen on Jeremiah of which however the author's name is not given; in the former it is headed simply 'Omilia "A Homily"; in the latter, by natural error "Twentieth Homily" [Barnard A Homily of Clement of Alexandria p. 6]

The point is that the reason why we identify this text as being written by someone named 'Clement' is because of the witness of fourth century Church Fathers starting with Eusebius. It is amazing however how little - if any - manuscript evidence actually exists to confirm this claim.

Let's start with the Stromateis. I bet few people outside of experts in the field of the study of 'Clement' realize that:

There is but one MS of the Stromateis, Laur, v 3 of the eleventh century, preserved at Florence, Paris B N Suppl. Graec. 250 (saec. xvi) is merely a copy of L. It is unfortunate that owing to a leaf at the beginning of the MS, we do not now possess the opening paragraphs of the work [p. 139]

So much then for identifying 'Titus Flavius Clement' as the name of the author of the Stromateis from the earliest manuscript. The same strange situation is also evidenced by the other earliest manuscripts of other works.

It is generally acknowledged that the surviving texts of the Stromateis, Protrepticus and the Paedagogus derive from the efforts of Bishop Arethas of Caesarea in Cappadocia. It generally goes unreported that Arethas in turn was a student of Photius of Constantinople. As such it is rarely mentioned that the reason why the Hypotyposeis were not included in this collection is because Photius deemed it not to have been written by Clement.

Now there can be no doubt that the earliest surviving manuscript of the Protrepticus does witness the author as 'Clementos Stromateos.' Yet Cosaert's overview of the low quality of the manuscript is very enlightening:

While there are a number of extant fragments of Clement's writings, only a handful of relatively late continuous texts manuscripts exist today. The oldest surviving manuscript is the tenth century Arethas Codex dated located in the Biblioteque Nationale at Paris (Parisinus gr. 451 = P). The manuscript claims to be copied for the Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia between September 913 and August 914. The codex originally contained all of the Protrepticus as well as the three volumes of Clement's Paedagogus. The codex is badly mutilated however, and no longer preserves the first ten chapters of Paed 1 and the opening lines of chapter 11. In addition to its condition, Marcovich notes that the manuscript appears to derive from an "exemplar full of textual corruptions, lacunae, interpolations and dislocations." The primary witness for the missing part of the Paedagogus is the eleventh century manuscript Mutinensis, gr. 126 (= M). This manuscript contains all of the Protrepticus and Paedagogus. The nearly identical nature of M and P have led scholars to conclude that M was copied from P.

Cosaert also notes that the same situation is to be found with the other surviving manuscripts:

The text of the Stromateis, Excerpta ex Theodoto and the Eclogae propheticae is also primarily dependent upon one late manuscript. In the case of these writings, the manuscript is the Laurentianus V 3 (= L) located in Florence. It has been thought that the manuscript might also have belonged to Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea. As with the case with P, L is full of textual corruptions, errors in names, numbers, omissions, misplaced sentences, as well as insertion of marginalia into the text. The textual corruptions of L do not appear to be due to the frailty of the scribe who copied it. Commenting on Hort's extensive examination of the textual corruptions in the Stromateis, Frederic Kenyon concluded that the extensive nature and character of the textual corruptions pointed to a damaged ancestor - probably going all the way back to a poorly copied papyrus archetype.

In his conclusion Cosaert notes:

The fact that the sole authority for each of Clement's extant writings is ultimately dependent on a single manuscript is far from ideal. For text-critical purposes, one would prefer to have several independent manuscripts for each of Clement's writings. This would make it possible to determine if his New Testament citations had been carefully preserved or altered through transcription. Unfortunately this is not possible. [p. 13 - 14]

I should mention also that while Eusebius tells us that the Stromateis were eight books in length the eighth book is subject to much dispute among scholars.

Book eight of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria has been preserved in two manuscripts, the eleventh century Laurentianus V 3 and the sixteenth century Parisinus Suppl. Graec. 250; the latter is a copy of the former. In both manuscripts the seven books of the Stromateis are followed by material titled as an eighth book. The material falls into three main parts: a section on logic, the Excerpta ex Theodoto and the Eclogae propheticae. The first section is neither a coherent whole nor a collection: a discussion of logical demonstration (apodeisis; 1 - 15.1) is followed by an argument against the skeptics (15.2 - 24.9) which in turn is followed by part of a treatise on different kinds of causes (25.1 - 33.9). Then follows a section entitled Epitomes from Theodotus and from what is Called the Eastern Teaching from the Time of Valentinus; then a section entitled Prophetic Extracts. While the Stromateis make a virtue of loose connections and seemingly random juxtaposition, these materials do not form anything so coherent as an eighth book of that work [p. 100]

This my friends, is the proper introduction to the PROBLEM that is Clement of Alexandria. It is not a matter of 'accepting' that everything is 'perfectly alright' with our knowledge of who or what the Alexandrian author represented. We have a troubling mix of true and spurious works and a collection of scholars who have not been sufficiently critical to make sense of all the ambiguous information.