stephan huller

Interestingly there is much confusion about sayings of Philo and Clement of Alexandria in these texts. This would see to make it impossible to identify Sacred Parallel's 'Clement' with Clement of Rome.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9z8...ilo%22&f=false

andrewcriddle

Hi Stephan

What I'm suggesting (improbably or otherwise) is that there was a collection of (mostly spurious) letters attributed to Clement which did not make clear which Clement (Rome or Alexandria) was involved.

This may seem a wild idea, but the alternative seems to be that the compilers of the Sacra Parallela had access to two otherwise unknown substantial collections of letters; one attributed to Clement of Rome the other to Clement of Alexandria.

FWIW Annick Martin doubts the authenticity of the letter fragments attributed to Clement of Alexandria.

Andrew Criddle

MrMacSon

I then often wonder if there was a 3rd or 4th character by the same name around the same times.

stephan huller

Andrew, but this opens a whole new dimension to the debate about the authenticity of the Mar Saba document. The letter clearly says that it comes from a collection of letters of Clement of Alexandria. I can't find very much written about these letters before the discovery in 1958. So where did the idea for the inscription come from?

I've been thinking about your argument for some time. For those who claim that Morton Smith forged Mar Saba 65 it has to be argued that he read Sacred Parallels. To argue that he invented the text independent of John of Damascus is absurd.

So there was a time pre-1958 where this obscure text Sacred Parallels existed in three forms - all incomplete mirrors of the lost original text by John of Damascus. But then if you are claiming that Morton Smith forged the document he would have had to have read the text and thought 'there is a collection of letters of Clement' and then set out to make one of the letters.

But then you have to turn around and say Smith had an imperfect knowledge of what the Sacred Parallels were saying. They really aren't that clear about the existence of Letters of Clement of Alexandria. But then there is the discovery of the letter to Theodore which opens with the words "From the letters of the most holy Clement, the author of the Stromateis." It seems odd that Morton Smith is so brilliant that he can forge a letter of Clement but incapable of seeing that there is no evidence for the existence of the collection of letters in Sacred Parallels.

But I notice that you posted at Synopic Solutions two years ago an article "Annick Martin , in a paper delivered at a Quebec conference about the Gospel of Thomas and Nag Hammadi, suggests that the Mar Saba letter may be a product of the Origenist Movement."

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=r...thomas&f=false

The point is that all the recent evidence points in the same direction - i.e. the existence of an Origenist body at Mar Saba in antiquity who either preserved or invented this letter.

I do think though that Tzamalikos's work with tip the scales even here in favor of the idea that it is a letter of Clement if only because his Cassian the Sabaite is at Mar Saba with a large collection of Clementine material. The Stromata was certainly here. So too the Instructor and the Exhortation but also the Hypotyposeis. I just noticed that Tzamalikos identifies the scholia of Pseudo-Dionysius as another lost text of Cassian the Sabaite (c. early sixth century). In the scholia to Ps-Dionysius (PG 4:225, 228) the Hypotyposeis is referenced - “The divine John speaks of elder angels in the Apocalypse, and we read in Tobit as well as in the fifth book of Clement's Hypotyposeis that the premier angels are seven." http://books.google.com/books?id=Vdm...the%22&f=false

The battle of the 21st century is really over whether or not the Origenists monks of Mar Saba preserved or invented a collection of letters by Clement. The issue of Morton Smith being the forger will likely be remembered as a 20th century distraction. Your statistical study of the words in the Letter to Theodore work equally well with an ancient or modern forgery.

I don't know how we would prove or disprove that the letter was created by these Origenist monks or was really by Clement. One step at a time though.

stephan huller

And for the record I went through her paper and here are the reasons for her doubting the authenticity of the existence of the collection:

Yet we still arrive at the same difficulty. Indeed her argument is all over the map. At one time the letter might be the product of Origenists. At another time there is no evidence that this colelction of letters ever existed. Yet if the reference to the existence of letters of Clement are so obscure, why does the letter to Theodore attest it is part of that collection?

stephan huller

And this is what you wrote in your article regarding the last of the three references to the collections of letters of Clement in Sacred Parallels:

How do either you or Annik Martin get around the fact that either we have a collection of letters attributed to Clement of Alexandria, Clement of Rome or some other unknown Clement? Given the context it is Clement of Alexandria. I don't know why we waste time with these distractions. I spent all night reading your article and that of Annik Martin (and struggling through Holl's original German). It's 1:00 am in the morning. How can anyone honestly claim that there wasn't a collection of letters of Clement known to John of Damascus? Sure there are reasons for doubting anything. mountainman thinks everything was written in the fourth century. But come on, if you weren't attached to a position already with respect to Mar Saba 65, would you really be doubting the existence of this collection of letters? I don't think so. We accept things on much flimsier evidence in the study of the New Testament and the Patristic literature all the time.

stephan huller

And I am going through the Sacred Parallels and notice something else which I think excludes the possibility that any reference to the figure of 'Clement' could be Clement of Rome. John always seems to distinguish between the two Clements by calling Clement of Rome 'St Clement' or some form of his full title -

Τοῦ ἁγίου Κλήμεντος ἐπισκόπου Ῥώμης (96.480)

Τοῦ ἁγίου Κλήμεντος ἐπισκόπου Ῥώμης, ἐκ τῆς βʹ πρὸς Κορινθίους ἐπιστολῆς (96.529)

Τοῦ ἁγίου Κλήμεντος, ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Κορινθίους ἐπιστολῆς βʹ (96.537)

compare:

Κλήμεντος, ἐκ τοῦ ηʹ Στρωμ (96.473)

Κλήμεντος, ἐκ τοῦ ηʹ Στρωμάτων (96.480)

Κλήμεντος ἐκ τοῦ ηʹ τῶν Στρωμάτων (96.508)

There are no other 'Clement' references in the Rupefucaldina

stephan huller

Other authors who are consistently identified as 'saints' in the Sacred Parallels:

Τοῦ ἁγίου Τίτου ἐπισκόπου Βοστρῶν

Τοῦ ἁγίου Εἰρηναίου (96.467, 468, 477, 480 x3, 481, 503, 505)

Τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰγνατίου (96. 467, 473, 508)

Τοῦ ἁγίου Ἀντιπάτρου Βοστρῶν

Τοῦ ἁγίου ∆ιαδόχου

Τοῦ ἁγίου Κυρίλλου

Τοῦ ἁγίου ∆ιονυσίου Ἀλεξανδρείας

Τοῦ ἁγίου Ἰουστίνου φιλοσόφου καὶ μάρτυρος

Τοῦ ἁγίου Ἐφραιμίου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Ἀντιοχείας

Τοῦ ἁγίου Σεραπίωνος,

Τοῦ ἁγίου Μελετίου ἐπισκόπου Ἀντιοχείας

Τοῦ ἁγίου Ἐφραὶμ

τοῦ ἁγίου ἱερομάρτυρος Μεθοδίου Πατάρων

The point is that there is consistency which is ignored by those who pretend that the third reference to 'Clement' might be Clement of Rome. Whenever Clement is used with out the title Saint it means Clement of Alexandria

stephan huller

Am I the only person at the forum who thinks of Anouk Aimee when the name Annik is brought up?

stephan huller

Getting back to more substantive issues, I started to think about the consistent avoidance of the Sacred Parallels (at least in the one transcription I managed to get a hold of) to avoid calling Clement of Alexandria - 'saint Clement.' John of Damascus reserves this title for Clement of Rome. If the copyist was inventing the letter from some speculative imagining based on the Sacred Parallels (the only text to mention the collection of letters) why wouldn't he simply use the formula used there?

or some such variation? Instead we get:

where did the τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου Κλήμεντος ascription come from? It is clearly not from the Sacred Parallels. Where then? Apparently from yet another lost book which apparently survived and circulated among the monks of Mar Saba in the seventh century:

We find Maximus the Confessor refer to Clement's lost work On Providence; citations 79-82 in most collections:

"From the work On Providence, of the most holy Clement, presbyter of Alexandria"

The rest of the reference is different of course - yet the idea that Maximus was in possession of not only the lost Hypotyposeis but another work - On Providence - where he used the same formula as what appears in the Mar Saba document is very interesting. It probably circulated within the circle of Mar Saba in the seventh century. A similar formula is used in Maximus's writings elsewhere:

Now we have the Τοῦ ἁγιωτάτου and the τοῦ Στρωματέως found in the Mar Saba 65 ascription. My guess is that the text was known to Maximus.