| Clement passage | Greek cited / alluded to | Synoptic locus | Markan corridor location | Gospel profile | Effect on Secret Mark / Canon thesis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strom. 25.1–25.3 | νῦν δὲ ἐν τῷ καιρῷ τούτῳ ἀγροὺς καὶ χρήματα καὶ οἰκίας καὶ ἀδελφοὺς… μετὰ διωγμῶν | Mark 10:29–30; Matt 19:29; Luke 18:29–30 | Inside corridor (Mark 10) | Predominantly Markan (unique “with persecutions”) | Strongly supportive |
In Stromateis 25.1–25.3 Clement explicitly engages the dominical promise that those who leave family, property, and livelihood for Christ will receive them back “now in this time … with persecutions.” The decisive marker here is the phrase μετὰ διωγμῶν, which is distinctive to Mark 10:30 and absent from Matthew’s and Luke’s parallels. This element is not ornamental; it governs Clement’s entire interpretation of the saying.
Clement’s exposition presupposes the Markan structure of the rich man discourse and its aftermath within the discipleship corridor. He does not treat the promise as an abstract reward saying, nor as a generalized Matthean blessing, but as a paradoxical reconstitution of social bonds under persecution. The examples he gives—Peter with Andrew, James with John, the sons of Zebedee—are not generic siblings but Markan disciples named precisely where Mark situates the renunciation narrative.
Moreover, Clement’s insistence that Christ does not call disciples to literal homelessness or destitution, but to a reordered possession of goods and relationships under pressure, aligns exactly with Mark’s tension between loss and recompense. The persecutions are not postponed to an eschatological horizon; they are structural to discipleship in the present age, as in Mark’s narrative logic.
This passage therefore does more than merely “agree” with Mark. It depends on a Markan feature that cannot be derived from Matthew and only awkwardly from Luke. Clement’s argument collapses without the Markan clause. The saying is neither purely Matthean nor loosely harmonized; it is Markan at the level of conceptual control.
Accordingly, Stromateis 25.1–25.3 is one of the clearest pieces of internal evidence that Clement’s gospel framework—at least in this ethical and ascetical register—is governed by the Markan discipleship corridor. It materially advances the Secret Mark / Canon thesis by showing that Clement not only knows Mark, but reads dominical promises through Mark’s distinctive lens of renunciation-plus-persecution, the very axis later formalized in Eusebius’s Mark-centered canon tables.
