stephan huller

I have been corresponding with the great Greek scholar Panayiotis Tzamalikos of Aristotle University http://www.tzamalikos.gr/bio.html about his forthcoming book on Cassian the Sabaite which he describes (in Morton Smith-like terms of an epiphany on his website):

In his new book http://www.tzamalikos.gr/bibilio-en.html he has determined that there was a previously unknown Church Father named Cassian who lived at Mar Saba and had access to a large library of Alexandrian authors including Clement there. While it has been previously determined that a collection of letters of Clement must have existed at the monastery because of John of Damascus, another forthcoming monograph from Professor Booth of Cambridge (I forget his name) shows that the Hypotyposeis was also there passing through various well known figures there (John Moschus, Sophronius the last bishop before the Muslim conquest, Maximus etc). This discover seals the deal on the existence of the collection of books there. Tzamalikos has told my by email that he is continuing to go through a great volume of manuscripts at a monastery associated with Cassian and even more witnesses to Clementine documents are likely to come up. Let's keep our fingers crossed (or not in the case of some naysayers :huh

Roger Pearse

Interesting. Thank you.

I wasn't aware that any letters of Clement of Alexandria were extant or known, so I was rather interested in this part of your post. Could you say a little more about this? Is it the case that John Damascene quotes from or references them? If so, where?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

stephan huller

Yes Roger, Morton Smith makes reference to the existence of letters of Clement of Alexandria (which number at least 21 because of John of Damascus's citations from the collection in his Sacred Parallels = he mentions the twenty first of these letters). He also references the Stromata, the Instructor and the Exhortation if memory serves me right. In any event, some have questioned whether the Sacred Parallels were composed at Mar Saba or even by John. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that there was a collection of the writings of Clement at Mar Saba. I have asked professor Tzamalikos for a detailed account of what material he has come across so far from Clement but it took him two months to get back to this email. He spends a lot of time at the remote monastery to get access to the texts.

In any event here is Booth's footnotes from a forthcoming article on the use of the Hypotyposeis at Mar Saba.

See Pratum 176 [PG 87:3 3045CD], with Harry E. Echle, “The Baptism of the Apostles: A Fragment of Clement of Alexandria’s Lost Work Hypotyposeis in the Pratum Spirituale of John Moschus”, Traditio 3 (1945) 365-8; cf. Second Canterbury Commentary on the Gospels 82. It is possible that the author of the Commentary cites directly from Moschus’s Pratum, as suggested in Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical commentaries 226. The same scholars also suggest a direct connection between the same passage, Pratum 176, and Theodore of Canterbury, Iudicia 2.4.4, both of which cite Gregory Nazianzus as an authority on baptism by tears. For Maximus’s citation of Clement’s Hypotyposeis see Maximus Confessor, Scholia on Ps.-Dionysius’s On the Divine Names [PG 4 228A]; Scholia on Ps.-Dionysius’s On Mystical Theology [PG 4 421BC]. The latter passage reads: ‘But I have read ‘seven heavens’ also in the Disputation of Papiscus and Jason ascribed to Aristo of Pella, and which Clement of Alexandria in the eighth book of Hypotyposeis says Saint Luke wrote.’ Sophronius, On the Circumcision 23-27 also refers to the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus and ascribes it to Saint Luke, perhaps indicating that he too knew the Hypotyposeis. For analysis of the newly discovered sermon by Sophronius see John Duffy, “New Fragments of Sophronius of Jerusalem and Aristo of Pella?”, in Bibel, Byzanz und Christlicher Orient: Festschrift für Stephen Gerö zum 65. Geburtstag, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 187 eds. Dmitrij Bumazhnov et al. (Leuven, 2011) pp. 15-28, noting the connection with Clement, Moschus and Maximus. For the baptism by tears, see also Anonymous of Whitby, Vita Greg. 29 (on Gregory’s baptism by tears of the soul of Trajan); on the latter cf. in Greek Ps.-John of Damascus, Oration on those who have slept in faith [PG 95 261D-264A].

We do have a chain of witnesses to some collection of material associated with Clement at Mar Saba from near the very beginning. It is hard to say where the collection came from (i.e. by way of Origenist monks who are known to have fled to Mar Saba from Egypt or as copies of the library of Caesarea). Cassian stretches from the late fifth to the early sixth century/John Moschus-Sophronius sixth century/Maximus their student and the John of Damacus.

Booth adds in an email to me that Maximus is, of course, also Palestinian, not Constantinopolitan as some still think - see esp. S. Brock, ‘An early Syriac Life of Maximus the Confessor’, Analecta Bollandia 91 (1973) 299-346; and C. Boudignon, 'Maxime le confesseur: etait-il constantinopolitain?' in B. Janssens, B. Rosen and P. van Deun (eds) Philomathestatos: Studies in Greek Patristic and Byzantine Texts presented to Jacques Noret (Louvain, 2004) 11-43).

Roger Pearse

Do you have the PG reference for the Sacra Parallela for letter 21 of Clement, by any chance?

andrewcriddle

I blogged some years ago on letters-of-clement-of-alexandria querying whether the sacra parallela are likely to preserve geniune but otherwise unknown Clementine letters.

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

The letters are generally acknowledged to be by Clement of Alexandria. it would be wonderful roger if you could dig around for the mss of the sacred parallels.

stephan huller

It should also be noted for people who are unfamiliar with the matter that the heading of the letter to Theodore found by Morton Smith at the monastery states that the letter itself had been taken from a collection of letters of Clement of Alexandria. The idea then that John of Damascus is witnessing a collection of at least twenty one letters of Clement of Rome (as Andrew seems to suggest) is even more outlandish and unprecedented than the existence of a longer gospel of Mark (witnessed by the Philosophumena, Irenaeus Against Heresies 3 etc).

As such John of Damascus has a collection of letters of Clement, the letter to Theodore says it comes from a collection of letters of Clement of Alexandria, both witnesses are associated with Mar Saba. Andrew seems to think it makes more sense to assume that Morton Smith not only invented the letter but ultimately misread the Sacred Parallels to assume the existence of the collection of Clement of Alexandria at Mar Saba and that it really was a collection of 21 letters of Clement of Rome at Mar Saba.

I think this only seems the probable scenario for people trying to disprove the authenticity of the discovery.

stephan huller

What is interesting (and what I hadn't notice before) is that the Sacred Parallels appears to have been part of a genre of this type of book written at Mar Saba:

I didn't even know these other works existed! I bet all three were composed at the monastery. I wonder what is in them?

By the way Roger there is the number - CPG8056

stephan huller

Apparently Holl argues that John of Damscus often utilized the Kephalaia attributed to Maximus.

stephan huller

Apparently John of Damascene makes reference to Philo of Alexandria http://books.google.com/books?id=NBY...allela&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=9z8...allela&f=false