I Don't Think Clement Knew Anything at All About Our Familiar 'John the Baptist'

I don't understand modern notions of 'mythicism' and the like. My only interest is the schools of thought within earliest Christianity and what those traditions believed. When I look at the earliest surviving writing of Clement of Alexandria - the Exhortation to the Greeks - there is something strange about the earliest discussion of Christianity. It develops from a discussion of Jewish history which isn't strange in itself. One might imagine that pagans had some exposure to Judaism. It's the way Clement references 'John' without much in the way of an explanation that is so odd. Clement introduces 'John' into the discussion without any of the trappings we might expect - i.e. background, context etc. It is as if his audience already knows 'John.'

The audience for the Exhortation was clearly non-believing Gentiles. There are also a number of hints in the narrative that his readership had already read Celsus's anti-Christian treatise 'the True Word.' In that treatise 'John' and 'Jesus' are introduced as 'bathing beside one another' so this might be the way non-believers were introduced to 'John.'

Yet I am not at all convinced that 'John' is our 'John the Baptist.' Yes, to be sure there are familiar references to Jewish prophesies. But the material only seems to be familiar in a very superficial way - i.e. that 'John' and 'Jesus' are referenced in respect to Isaiah 40:3. If you look closely that familiarity quickly vanishes. Jesus appears as a wholly angelic being and John something more than a mere 'precursor':

He [Jesus] awed men by the fire when He made flame to burst from the pillar of cloud--a token at once of grace and fear: if you obey, there is the light; if you disobey, there is the fire; but. since humanity is nobler than the pillar or the bush, after them the prophets uttered their voice,--the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, in Elias,--speaking Himself by the mouth of the prophets. But if thou dost not believe the prophets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to thee, "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled Himself," --He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to thee, Shaming thy unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God. Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation?

Does not John also invite to salvation, and is he not entirely a voice of exhortation? Let us then ask him, "Who of men art thou, and whence?" [Odyssey 14.190] Elias he will not say (Ἠλίας μὲν οὐκ ἐρεῖ). Christ he will refuse (Χριστὸς δὲ εἶναι ἀρνήσεται) but will profess himself to be "a voice crying in the wilderness." Who, then, is John? In a word, we may say, "The voice of agreement (φωνὴ δὲ ὁμολογήσει) crying in the wilderness." What criest thou, O voice? Tell us also.[Theages 123a] "Make straight the paths of the LORD." [Εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς ὁδοὺς κυρίου cf. Matt 3.3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4] John is the forerunner (Πρόδρομος Ἰωάννης), and that voice the forerunner of the Word (φωνὴ πρόδρομος τοῦ λόγου); an appealing voice (φωνὴ παρακλητική), preparing for salvation,--a voice urging men on to the inheritance of the heavens, and through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more. This fecundity the angel's voice foretold; and this voice was also the precursor of the Lord preaching glad tidings to the barren woman, as John did to the wilderness. By reason of this voice of the Word, therefore, the barren woman bears children, and the desert becomes fruitful. The two voices which heralded the Lord's--that of the angel and that of John--intimate, as I think, the salvation in store for us to be, that on the appearance of this Word we should reap, as the fruit of this productiveness, eternal life. The Scripture makes this all clear, by referring both the voices to the same thing: "Let her hear who has not brought forth, and let her who has not had the pangs of childbirth utter her voice: for more are the children of the desolate, than of her who hath an husband."

The angel announced to us the glad tidings of a husband. John entreated us to recognise the husbandman, to seek the husband. For this husband of the barren woman, and this husbandman of the desert--who filled with divine power the barren woman and the desert--is one and the same. For because many were the children of the mother of noble rule, yet the Hebrew woman, once blessed with many children, was made childless because of unbelief: the barren woman receives the husband, and the desert the husbandman; then both become mothers through the word, the one of fruits, the other of believers. But to the Unbelieving the barren and the desert are still reserved. For this reason John, the crier (κῆρυξ) of the Word, besought men to make themselves ready against the coming of the Christ Of God. And it was this which was signified by the dumbness of Zacharias, which waited for fruit in the person of the harbinger of Christ, that the Word, the light of truth, by becoming the Gospel, might break the mystic silence of the prophetic enigmas. But if thou desirest truly to see God, take to thyself means of purification worthy of Him, not leaves of laurel fillets interwoven. with wool and purple; but wreathing thy brows with righteousness, and encircling them with the leaves of temperance, set thyself earnestly to find Christ. "For I am," He says, "the door," which we who desire to understand God must discover, that He may throw heaven's gates wide open to. us. For the gates of the Word being intellectual, are opened by the key of faith. No one knows God but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him. And I know well that He who has opened the door hitherto shut, will afterwards reveal what is within; and will show what we could not have known before, had we not entered in by Christ, through whom alone God is beheld. [Exhortation 50]

The point again is that the material only looks to point to familiar themes but if we scrutinize the text carefully there is something very different about it. Let's start with the first line highlighted in red:

Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation?

The reason I emboldened it in this color is to alert the reader that until now Clement has only been talking about the Divine Word. The next line suddenly introduces 'John' and seems to have no bearing at all that preceded it:

Does not John also invite to salvation, and is he not entirely a voice of exhortation?

I find it very odd that Clement should just throw out 'John' into his Exhortation without any word of introduction. Clement by contrast spends many paragraphs explaining how the Logos took on the name 'Christ':

inasmuch as the Word was from the first, He was and is the divine source of all things; but inasmuch as He has now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old, and worthy of power, he has been called by me the New Song. This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well-being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man--the Author of all blessings to us; by whom we, being taught to live well, are sent on our way to life eternal

The point is that John is mentioned in the text and Clement's audience has already heard something about 'Christ' and 'John.' I just can't believe that Clement originally wrote the line emboldened in yellow. Even if we ignore this question, I think that the 'he' that Clement says that we should ask questions in what immediately follows is actually Jesus rather than John:

Let us then ask him, "Who of men art thou, and whence?" [Odyssey 14.190] Elias he will not say (Ἠλίας μὲν οὐκ ἐρεῖ). Christ he will refuse (Χριστὸς δὲ εἶναι ἀρνήσεται) but will profess himself to be "a voice crying in the wilderness." Who, then, is John? In a word, we may say, "The voice of agreement (φωνὴ δὲ ὁμολογήσει) crying in the wilderness." What criest thou, O voice? Tell us also.[Theages 123a] "Make ready the paths of the LORD." [Εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς ὁδοὺς κυρίου cf. Matt 3.3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4] John is the forerunner (Πρόδρομος Ἰωάννης), and that voice the forerunner of the Word (φωνὴ πρόδρομος τοῦ λόγου); an appealing voice (φωνὴ παρακλητική), preparing for salvation,--a voice urging men on to the inheritance of the heavens, and through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more.

It would seem utterly natural for us to identify this entire section as an allusion to John 1:19 - 24:

Now this was John’s testimony when the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Messiah.” They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” He answered, “No.” Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’”

Yet there are obvious problems with this assertion. The first is that there is nothing in the material in the Exhortation that is taken from this narrative. There are no examples of Clement citing anything from this section of text anywhere in his other writings. There are also peculiarities about the passage in the Exhortation that have to be noted.

The most obvious is that Clement's development of the questions cited above seem to come out of his own imagination. Instead of citing John 1:19 he cites from a line in Homer:

Let us then ask him, "Who of men art thou, and whence?" [Odyssey 14.190]

The next line could just as well be a reference to Mark 8:28 - 30:

Elias he will not say (Ἠλίας μὲν οὐκ ἐρεῖ). Christ he will refuse (Χριστὸς δὲ εἶναι ἀρνήσεται)

Indeed the Gospel of Mark in particular has an obsession with popular misidentications of Jesus with Elijah (cf. 10.Mark 6:15, 8:28, 9:4,5, 9:11 - 13, 15:35,36).

While it is second nature now for us to identify John as the "voice crying in the wilderness" [Isa 40.3] there are peculiarities here too. Why did the editors of Mark add Isaiah 40:3 at the end of the amalgam of promises made in Exodus 23:20 and Malachi 3:1 and then claim that everything came from 'the prophet Isaiah'? This has never adequately been explained. Yet even more puzzling is the fact that whereas in Isa 40:3 the voice cries out "In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord," in Mark 1:3 a different conception is present - i.e. that there is "the one crying out in the wilderness" The difference is attributable to the LXX version of Isa 40:3.

Yet notice that John 1:23 has John himself announce absolutely explicitly:

“I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord."

Clement clearly does not have the same understanding. Jesus is the one prophesied by Isaiah crying in the wilderness and John is a 'second voice' of agreement:

Let us then ask him, "Who of men art thou, and whence?" Elias he will not say. Christ he will refuse. but will profess himself to be "a voice crying in the wilderness." Who, then, is John? In a word, we may say, "The voice of agreement crying in the wilderness."

Clearly then it is settled. Jesus is the 'voice' of Isa 40:3 who is in the 'wilderness' because he has been rejected by the unbelevers (see later in the section). It is Jesus who will not say that he is Elijah and Jesus who will deny he is Christ. "Who, then, is John?" makes clear that we are moving on to a discussion of John as a 'voice of agreement' in the same wilderness 'of unbelief.'

If Clement knew that the Gospel of John has John the Baptist explicitly identify himself as the 'voice' of Isa 40:3 why would Clement avoid mentioning this and instead formulate his own understanding. The bottom line is that Clement's gospel(s) were different from our own. We see the same pattern in another reference related to John the Baptist in the Paedagogue were Clement attributes words associated with Jesus in our gospel with John the Baptist:

And in the Gospel, through John, He calls them 'serpents, brood of vipers.' [Paed 1.80]

The difficulty of course is that the words cited here come from Matt 23:33 straight of Jesus's mouth not John's. Yet this is the important thing to remember - Clement is not using our canonical gospels.

So let's move on and ask - why is Clement saying John is a 'voice of agreement'? An agreement to what? Clearly the voice of Jesus who was identified as a spurned voice in the line just before all of the citation of Isa 40:3 are ever made:

Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation

Indeed the only way that any of this material can make any sense is if go back to the very beginning of the Exhortation and realize that Jesus is talking about a 'New Song' and realize that ancient music was developed from the interval - i.e. two notes plucked in unison that were in 'agreement' or 'harmony' with one another. The usual harmonies were the diapason (the octave), the diapente (the fifth) and the diatessaron (the fourth) which also happens to be the name of a gospel associated with Tatian.

Jesus and John now represent two voices that say the same thing. Once this is in place we have a most startling revelation - Clement identifies Jesus explicitly as an 'angelic voice' juxtaposed against the 'human voice' of John in all that follows. Let's look at it again:

but will profess himself to be "a voice crying in the wilderness." Who, then, is John? In a word, we may say, "The voice of agreement crying in the wilderness." What criest thou, O voice? Tell us also. "Make straight the paths of the LORD." [Εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς ὁδοὺς κυρίου cf. Matt 3.3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4] John is the forerunner (Πρόδρομος Ἰωάννης), and that voice the forerunner of the Word (φωνὴ πρόδρομος τοῦ λόγου); an appealing voice (φωνὴ παρακλητική), preparing for salvation,--a voice urging men on to the inheritance of the heavens, and through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more. This fecundity the angel's voice foretold; and this voice was also the precursor of the Lord preaching glad tidings to the barren woman, as John did to the wilderness

The reader has to see that Clement is actually refering to the Word visiting Sarah:

The two voices which heralded the Lord's--that of the angel and that of John--intimate, as I think, the salvation in store for us to be, that on the appearance of this Word we should reap, as the fruit of this productiveness, eternal life. The Scripture makes this all clear, by referring both the voices to the same thing: "Let her hear who has not brought forth, and let her who has not had the pangs of childbirth utter her voice: for more are the children of the desolate, than of her who hath an husband."

Isaiah 54:1 LXX appears of course in Galatians 4:27 as if it were an allusion to Sarah's barrenness. Clement would have certainly have known that of course but notice at once how different Clement's version of the passage of Isaiah is from our text which claims to be 'the LXX' (it is not). First Clement in the Exhortation:

Ἀκουσάτω ἡ οὐ τίκτουσα· ῥηξάτω φωνὴν ἡ οὐκ ὠδίνουσα, ὅτι πλείονα τὰ τέκνα τῆς ἐρήμου μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἐχούσης τὸν ἄνδρα.

And now our 'LXX':

εὐφράνθητι στεῖρα ἡ οὐ τίκτουσα ῥῆξον καὶ βόησον ἡ οὐκ ὠδίνουσα ὅτι πολλὰ τὰ τέκνα τῆς ἐρήμου μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἐχούσης τὸν ἄνδρα εἶπεν γὰρ κύριος

And our version of Gal 4:27 agrees with this later 'false' LXX:

έγραπται γὰρ· εὐφράνθητι, στεῖρα ἡ οὐ τίκτουσα, ῥῆξον καὶ βόησον, ἡ οὐκ ὠδίνουσα· ὅτι πολλὰ τὰ τέκνα τῆς ἐρήμου μᾶλλον ἢ τῆς ἐχούσης τὸν ἄνδρα.

The key difference is of course that the original text had the word 'voice' (φωνὴν) associated with the barren woman who is speaks the word of the Lord. It might be tempting for us again to start thinking of the 'virgin birth' of Jesus again because of our pre-programming but Clement explicitly shoots this interpretation down in Strom 7:16.

So what is Clement using Isaiah 54:1 for in relation to the Word's miraculous impregnatation of Sarah? He already hints at it earlier in the section:

a voice urging men on to the inheritance of the heavens, and through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more. This fecundity the angel's voice foretold; and this voice was also the precursor of the Lord preaching glad tidings to the barren woman, as John did to the wilderness

John is preaching the gospel to 'the wilderness' (i.e. the unbelievers) just as the Word foretold that Sarah would be pregnant with a child. We should go now to some other passages in Clement which help sort this out. First his Ecologues of the Prophets makes clear that he believed that angels were responsible for impregnating women:

And if the angels bring good news to barren women, so also do they infuse souls at conception. In the gospel, 'the babe leapt' [means that it is] ensouled . . . And because of this barren women are barren, since the soul is not infused, accompanying the depositing of seed for the retention [ie, viability] of conception and birth (Ed. 50. 1-3).

This is the first part of the equation (i.e. its 'literal' meaning) or what happened with Sarah. Now for what this was a 'type' of with relation to John in the wilderness.

Clement makes clear in the Stromateis that he is actually talking about the creation of the gospel:

But, as appears, many even down to our own time regard Mary, on account of the birth of her child, as having been in the puerperal state, although she was not. For some say that, after she brought forth, she was found, when examined, to be a virgin. Now such to us are the Scriptures of the Lord, which gave birth to the truth and continue virgin, in the concealment of the mysteries of the truth. "And she brought forth, and yet brought not forth," Says the Scripture; as having conceived of herself, and not from conjunction. Wherefore the Scriptures have conceived to Gnostics; but the heresies, not having learned them, dismissed them as not having conceived.

Clearly the heretics denying that the scriptures 'conceived' is a reference to the Marcionites and other heretics who are repeatedly identified as denying a connection between the Law and the prophets and the gospel.

The question now is whether Clement merely means that the Scriptures 'gave birth to Christ' in a virginal state or 'gave birth to the gospel.' I tend to think the latter as Clement also identifies Jesus speaking through the various prophets which make up the Scriptures. It doesn't make sense to say that the very 'voices' through which Jesus 'spoke' gave birth to him. I think instead Clement is alluding to the Alexandrian notion of the incarnation so perfectly explained by Stephen J Davis. In a nutshell, Clement is thus saying that the Scriptures gave birth to the gospel and the gospel in turn helped establish ever new incarnations of God in man.

So it is that we should notice that Clement says a little later in Strom 7:16:

He, then, who of himself believes the Scripture and voice of the Lord, which by the Lord acts to the benefiting of men, is rightly [regarded] faithful ... [W]e are by the voice of the Lord trained up to the knowledge of the truth.

Once again 'the voice of the Lord' is the Law and the prophets and 'the truth' is the gospel. Yet it must be emphasized that Clement acknowledges that the heretics skipped a link in the chain. They argued that the gospel was born independent of the old Scriptures as some 'revelation' made to the apostle in heaven. Clement rejects this notion saying over and over again things such as:

They say, then, that in muddy water eels are caught by being blinded. And just as knavish boys bar out the teacher, so do these shut out the prophecies from their Church, regarding them with suspicion by reason of rebuke and admonition. In fact, they stitch together a multitude of lies and figments, that they may appear acting in accordance with reason in not admitting the Scriptures. So, then, they are not pious, inasmuch as they are not pleased with the divine commands, that is, with the Holy Spirit. And as those almonds are called empty in which the contents are worthless, not those in which there is nothing; so also we call those heretics empty, who are destitute of the counsels of God and the traditions of Christ; bitter, in truth, like the wild almond, their dogmas originating with themselves, with the exception of such truths as they could not, by reason of their evidence, discard and conceal.

The image of the wild almond is very interesting for they were understood in antiquity to develop asexually (i.e. without partner). The heretics are clearly arguing for a gospel which similarly developed independently of what came before.

The interesting thing is that the Marcionites certainly had Galatians chapter 4 and its interest in Sarah as the 'type' of the Church if not the gospel. In other words, both Clement and the heretics were borrowing from the same understanding. Sarah's miraculous birth according to the Word is indeed symbolic of Christianity and the gospel. He just so happens to go out of his way to include 'the Scriptures' in the allegory which doesn't really suit the material.

Now when we move to the end of the reference in Strom 7.16 Clement sums up his understanding that we should adhere to both 'Scripture' and 'the Gospel':

so he who listens to the Lord, and follows the prophecy given by Him, will be formed perfectly in the likeness of the teacher -- made a god going about in flesh.

Yet both Clement and the heretics must both have known the existence of a gospel which was somehow appeared unrelated to the old teaching of the Jews. Otherwise Clement would simply have said something like 'all the gospels make reference to Scripture' which he doesn't. The argument instead becomes that when interpreting the Gospel you should keep your exegesis in harmony with the Law and the prophets and the (canonical) gospels and the apostles. Yet the bottom line is that it was entirely possible to interpret the text without using the Scriptures - something impossible with the canonical texts as they all begin with that citation of Isaiah 40:3.

Clement is clearly not talking about John the Baptist in Exhortation but John the disciple and his authoring of a gospel. The passages he cites must have appeared in such a way that they applied to a 'John' but not necessarily 'John the Baptist' as we now know him.