| Clement work & locus | Gospel material cited | Gospel references | Explanation of Clement’s use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paedagogus 1.5.12.3–4 | Children brought to Jesus; childlikeness required for the kingdom | Matt 19:13–14 + Matt 18:3 (cf. Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17) | Clement fuses two Matthean passages that are separated in Matthew’s narrative and presents them as a single continuous teaching. The fusion reproduces the Markan unity of the children episode and the childlikeness saying, suggesting use of a harmonized gospel whose structure follows Mark’s ordering while drawing on Matthean diction. |
This passage provides one of the clearest internal indications that Clement is working with a harmonized gospel tradition whose structural logic is Markan, even when the diction is predominantly Matthean. The significance lies not in verbal overlap alone, but in how Clement orders, fuses, and interprets dominical material.
Clement begins by citing the episode of children being brought to Jesus, corresponding to Matthew 19:13–14, with parallels in Mark 10:13–14 and Luke 18:15–16. The wording Clement uses is recognizably Matthean: children are brought for χειροθεσία εὐλογίας, the μαθηταί (generalized as οἱ γνώριμοι) attempt to hinder them, and Jesus responds, “ἄφετε τὰ παιδία καὶ μὴ κωλύετε αὐτά… τῶν γὰρ τοιούτων ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.” The phrase βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν and the reference to χειροθεσία mark the diction as Matthew rather than Mark or Luke.
What is decisive, however, is what Clement does next. Without any narrative break, change of setting, or indication that he is moving to a new context, Clement immediately introduces a second dominical saying with the explicit claim that Jesus himself “clarifies” the meaning of the first: “αὐτὸς διασαφήσει ὁ κύριος λέγων· ἐὰν μὴ στραφῆτε καὶ γένησθε ὡς τὰ παιδία ταῦτα, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.” This saying corresponds to Matthew 18:3, which in the canonical Gospel of Matthew appears earlier, in a different narrative context, addressed to the disciples in response to a question about greatness in the kingdom.
In Matthew’s Gospel, these two sayings are scattered: Matthew 18:3 and Matthew 19:13–15 are separated by chapter division, setting, audience, and rhetorical purpose. Matthew does not present the “become like children” saying as an explanation of the children-blessing episode. Clement nevertheless treats it precisely that way. He explicitly frames the second saying as the authoritative interpretation of the first, asserting a sequential teaching logic that Matthew’s narrative does not supply.
This fusion is not accidental. Clement is not merely chaining prooftexts. He presents these two sayings as a single, continuous instructional unit, unified thematically and exegetically, and he comments on them as such. This behavior is characteristic of an author working from a pre-combined dominical complex, rather than assembling isolated quotations ad hoc.
The decisive point is that Mark already preserves exactly the unity Clement presupposes. In Mark 10:13–16, the children episode and the saying about receiving the kingdom “as a child” belong to a single continuous scene. The sequence is fixed: children are brought → disciples hinder → Jesus rebukes them → Jesus defines childlikeness as the condition for participation in the kingdom. Although Mark’s wording differs (“δέξηται τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ ὡς παιδίον”), the ordering and didactic logic correspond precisely to Clement’s presentation. Clement’s text thus recreates Mark’s conceptual unity, but with Matthean vocabulary.
In other words, Clement’s passage is neither “pure Matthew” nor “pure Mark.” It is Markan in structure and sequencing, Matthean in diction. The Matthean pieces are drawn from different locations in Matthew’s Gospel and recombined into a configuration that Matthew himself does not provide, but that Mark already supplies at the level of narrative logic.
This alignment becomes even clearer when viewed in light of Eusebius’s Gospel Canon system. Eusebius assigns Matthew 18:3 and Matthew 19:13–15 to different Matthean sections and places them in different canonical contexts, because he preserves Matthew’s dispersed narrative structure when correlating parallels. By contrast, Mark 10:13–16 appears as a single, continuous Markan section within the discipleship corridor and is correlated with Luke 18:15–17 in the same canon table. The canon system thus registers the same unity Clement presupposes, but only when Mark governs the alignment.
Clement’s practice here ignores Matthew’s segmentation exactly where Eusebius preserves it and instead reproduces the unity that emerges in the canon tables when Mark is the controlling Gospel. The implication is not merely that Clement is harmonizing texts on his own initiative, but that he is reading, or thinking with, a gospel tradition in which these sayings already belong together as a single instructional sequence.
This is precisely what one would expect from a harmonized Markan gospel, such as the “Secret Mark” hypothesized in Clement’s Alexandrian milieu: a gospel whose structural spine follows the Markan discipleship corridor, while freely incorporating Matthean diction and expansions. Clement’s confidence that Matthew 18:3 “clarifies” Matthew 19:13–14 only makes sense if, in the gospel logic he is using, those sayings are already contiguous or mutually interpretive.
Accordingly, this passage does not merely permit the hypothesis of a harmonized Mark; it positively presupposes one. The harmonization is visible not at the level of verbal conflation alone, but at the deeper level of narrative order, didactic continuity, and exegetical coherence—the same level at which Eusebius’s Canon Tables operate when Mark supplies the governing axis.
| Clement citation (sequence) | Gospel references involved | What Clement does with them |
|---|---|---|
| Children brought to Jesus | Matt 19:13–14 // Mark 10:13–14 // Luke 18:15–16 | Clement cites the episode as a single scene, using Matthean diction (χειροθεσία, βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν) but preserving the Markan narrative logic in which the children episode stands as an instructional unit. |
| “Become like children” saying | Matt 18:3 (cf. Mark 10:15; Luke 18:17) | Clement appends this saying immediately as Jesus’ own clarification of the children episode, collapsing Matthew’s dispersed material into a single teaching sequence that mirrors Mark’s integrated presentation. |
| Unified teaching on childlikeness | Mark 10:13–16 (conceptual unit) | Clement treats the two Matthean sayings as one coherent dominical instruction, effectively reproducing the Markan unity of scene and saying, even though the surface vocabulary is drawn largely from Matthew. |
