andrewcriddle

FWIW Volkmar regarded Judith as a roman-a-clef about events c 116-118 CE. Volkmar on Judith
If so this would require a late date for Clement which clearly knows of Judith.
However Volkmar's position has never AFAIK obtained significant support.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

I so far tend to agree with your assessment from that other thread. Weird.

BTW, I noticed another comment of yours on that thread and have started a new thread to ask you about it.

Ben.

dog-on

Ben,

Based on the letter, when do you think that Clement thought Jesus had lived and how long before the letter was written do you believe that Clement thought Peter and Paul died?

dog-on

One more thing.

This letter seems to know Acts, (unless you prescribe to the possibility that Acts is actually a historical record), as well as the Pastoral epistles, (Titus and the 2 Tims), not to mention some seeming knowledge of the gospels, themselves.

By dating 1 Clement at the end of the first century, are you securing the NT entirely to the first century?

Ben C Smith

Well, in chapter 42 God sends Christ and Christ turns around and sends the apostles after the resurrection. So it seems most likely that Clement sees the generation of Christ as overlapping that of the apostles.

In chapter 5 Peter and Paul are considered examples from the same generation as the author (noble examples from our own generation), and in chapter 42 the apostles in general appointed church leaders, some of whom are still alive and being dismissed from their positions by the Corinthians (those appointed by [the apostles] or afterwards by other eminent men... cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry).

None of this gives us an exact chronology, but it sets certain parameters, I think. It seems unlikely that the apostles appointed very young men; the church leaders were commonly called elders, after all. If they did so in, say, the fifties or sixties, and at least some of them were still alive for the Corinthians to be kicking out, thus occasioning the letter, a date in century I seems most likely.

Any direct literary connections with Acts seem tenuous to me, although I do in fact think it contains plenty of actual church history. Perhaps you can point me to the overlaps you are thinking of.

As for the pastorals, I have noticed (at least some of) the parallels, but consider it more likely that their author was drawing on 1 Clement rather than vice versa.

Knowledge of the gospels is also hard to prove for 1 Clement. Clement quotes the sayings as words of the Lord Jesus, not as gospel texts. He may have gotten these words from written documents, or he may not have.

By no means.

Ben.

dog-on

One "literary connection" with Acts seems to be the Paul travel reference, (and come to the extreme limit of the west), in 1 Clement 5.

Disagree?

Ben C Smith

Yes, I disagree. I think the connection is with Romans 15.24.

Ben.