stephan huller

Not only did Leontius of Byzantium stay at Mar Saba he is associated with the Sacred Parallels - ""Discussions of Sacred Things", by Leontius and John ("De rebus sacris", P.G., LXXXVI, 2017-2100). This is a recension of the second book of the "Sacra Parallela" (collections of texts of the Fathers) of which a version is also attributed to St. John Damascene (c. 760)"

http://books.google.com/books?id=GDY...ohn%22&f=false

Can someone track down what this fragment actually said?

stephan huller

Oh boy, oh boy - I just saw that Andrew's arguments are made in reverse about this 'ninth letter of Clement' by Lightfoot

http://books.google.com/books?id=d9Z...%20mai&f=false

the author notes that Mai does not give the right reading of the passage. It does not read 'from the ninth letter of St Clement' but merely 'from his ninth letter':

Could the letter have been from Clement of Alexandria and misplaced as Lightfoot suggests? It is important to note that these traditions are all intertwined. We don't know who Leontius and John were. They could have been from the sixth century, they could have been from the seventh century but Leontius is a fairly common name.

stephan huller

Λεόντιος Βυζάντιος - Leontios Byzantios
Εις PG Migne 86 works ascribed to Leontius Byzantinus are:

(1) "Scholia" or ‘‘Of Sects" ("De Sectis", P. G., LXXXVI, 1193-1268) PG Migne 86; ten chapters called "Acts" (praxeis) against all the known heretics at that time, including Jews and Sarnaritans.

(2) three books "Against the Nestorians and Eutychians" (commonly quoted as "Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos", P.G., LXXXVI 1267-1396). PG Migne 86

(3) "Against the Nestorians" ("Adv. Nestorianos", P.G., LXXXVI, 1399-1768). in eight books, of which the last is wanting. "A classical work" (Nirsehi, op. cit., 555), explaining and defending all the issues against this heresy. Book IV defends the title Theotokos; Book VII defends the formula: "One of the Trinity suffered".

(4) "Against the Monophysites" ("Adv. Monophysitas", P.G., LXXXVI, 1769-1902), PG Migne 86, in two parts, but incomplete. Part I argues philosophically from the idea of nature; part II quotes the witness of the Fathers, and refutes texts alleged to favour Monophysitism.

(5) "Thirty chapters against Severus" ("Triginta capita", P.G., LXXXVI, 1901-1916), PG Migne 86, a short work with many parallels to the following one

(6) Solution of the arguments proposed by Severus" (of Antioch; "Adv. Severum" P.G., LXXXVI, 1915-1946). A refutation of Monophysitisim in dialogue form. It supposes a Monophysite work (otherwise unknown) whose order it follows.

(7) "Against the frauds of the Apollinarists" (‘‘Adv. fraudes Apollinaristarum", P. (1., LXXXVI, 1947-1976), PG Migne 86, a very important work, the beginning of the discovery of the works of Apollinaris of Laodicea which still occupies the minds of students. It is an examination of certain works attributed to Athanasius, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Pope Julius, which are declared to be really by Apollinaris, and fraudulently attributed to these Fathers by his followers.

(8) Two homilies by a priest Leontius of Constantinople (P.G., LXXXVI, 1975-2004), PG Migne 86, certainly another person. Of these works,

(9) "Discussions of Sacred Things", by Leontius and John ("De rebus sacris", P.G., LXXXVI, 2017-2100), PG Migne 86. This is a recension of the second book of the "Sacra Parallela" (collections of texts of the Fathers) of which a version is also attributed to St. John Damascene (c. 760).

(1) is certainly genuine, (8) and (9) are certainly not.

stephan huller

Found the original thanks to Roger's site:

http://books.google.com/books?id=37_...page&q&f=false

It would seem that the one manuscript has Hippolytus - not Clement of Rome - immediately preceding the reference to his ninth epistle. Maybe its too late. I should go to bed. But this is very interesting.

So we have a superscription which tells the reader Leontius and John are citing from Hippolytus's Commentary on Genesis and then this passage:

And then we have the reference to "his ninth epistle" and then the short fragment about God creating us from some anonymous Church Father.

stephan huller

At least some scholars have proposed that a collection of letters of Hippolytus were known to Eusebius when he writes (HE 6.20.2)

Roger Pearse

The name of Hippolytus, tho, gets attached to quite a number of things in the medieval period. He even turns up in Dionysius bar Salibi in the 13th century in Syriac. We need to be wary of references to him,perhaps.

stephan huller

"the ninth letter of st Clement of rome" is pretty much now dead in the water

andrewcriddle

The original manuscript IIUC has the passage from Hippolytus followed by the passage from the letter of the Holy Clement of Rome to the Corinthians followed immediately by the passage from the ninth letter.

The passage from the letter to the Corinthians is omitted in the printed text, (quem exscribere supersedeo which I omit to copy) , this makes it wrongly look as if the ninth letter immediately followed Hippolytus.

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

Still though, in your zeal to disprove the Mar Saba document you made it seem as if the Clement of Rome collection of nine letters was more certain than the Clement of Alexandria collection of 21:

No it doesn't. It merely says 'his ninth letter' and as mentioned we have at least two scholars long before 1958 who express at least some doubts about the preceding passage. I think it highly likely that you must have known what the actual reference in Leontius and John's text said - i.e. 'his ninth letter.' Odd.

So the actual situation - not mentioned in your article is that we have EXPLICIT references to Clement of Alexandria's collection of at least 21 letters and the kind of unreliable reference to the existence of a collection of nine letters of Clement of Rome (i.e. implicit - the kind you say is unreliable and should not be used to determine the authenticity of such a collection).

Moreover both Lightfoot and Migne had doubts about the preceding reference to chapter 33 of 1 Clement. This does not ever manifest itself with respect to the collection of letters of Clement of Alexandria. No one (besides those bent on disproving the Morton Smith discovery have ever doubted that (a) the references belong to Clement of Alexandria or (b) that there was an actually collection of at least 21 letters of Clement of Alexandria at Mar Saba).

Here is the rest of your references to Clement of Rome's collection of letters. It is that you should be so certain about the existence of the collection of letters of Clement or Rome and at the same time the non-existence of the collection of the letters of Clement of Alexandria:

Moreover I have been reading as much as I can about 'Leontius and John' in order to determine whether or not this manuscript was written before or after the Sacred Parallels. There is no definitive answer here. Some people have argued that Leontius is Leontius of Byzantium but others have argued that this isn't at all clear.

There simply is no parallel for the explicit reading 'from the 21 letter of Clement the Stromatist' with respect to Clement of Rome. As Lightfoot again notes:

andrewcriddle

The problem is that strictly speaking, both the attribution of the three passages to letters of Clement of Alexandria and the attribution of the single passage to a letter of Clement of Rome are questionable.

There is in fact a very similar issue in the attribution of the passage On the Kingdom of Heaven to a letter by Clement as in the case of the ninth letter of Clement of Rome. On the Kingdom of Heaven has, in some manuscripts, from letter 21 and is preceded by an explicitly attributed passage from Clement of Alexandria. This is a close parallel to the situation for the ninth letter, except that the case for attribution of On the Kingdom of Heaven to a Clementine letter is weaker textually speaking than the case for attributing the ninth letter to Clement of Rome.

Andrew Criddle