mountainman

A historian who knowingly makes false statements
in order to support his own agenda is guilty of
fraudulent misrepresentation of history. Forgery,
such as Eusebius producing the letter of Jesus,
in the Syriac from the archives, is a related act.

If Eusebius wrote I Clement, sometime between
312 and 324, and tries to pass off the writings
as those of a second century "Clement" profile,
Eusebius is guilty of fraud.

IMO, Eusebius wrote Clement 312-324 CE.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

schilling.klaus

That hermas is ahistorical fictioon,
derived from Hermes Trismegistos,
as seen from the parallels between the Poimandres and the Shepherd of Hermas.

Klaus Schilling

Ben C Smith

While I have some passing (one might prefer fleeting) familiarity of the corpus Hermeticum, I admit I do not know enough about it to evaluate this statement.

Would you mind posting (at least some of) the parallels that you see between the Shepherd of Hermas and Hermes Trismegistos?

Thanks.

Ben.

andrewcriddle

One argument against a very late date for Clement (post-Trajan) is chapter 44 http://www.tertullian.org/fathers2/A...htm#P171_20841 This seems to imply a time at which church officials directly appointed by the Apostles are still around but are increasingly being replaced by post-apostolic appointees.

This could fit during the reigns of Domitian Nerva and Trajan but not IMO before or later.

Andrew Criddle

yalla

At first reading [and maybe 2nd or more] I would tend to agree.
But it can be read differently .
Try this.
The author sees 2 groups of church officials.
Firstly, those appointed by the apostles. They cannot be dismissed.
"We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, [the apostles]............. cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry."
An opinion the author has justified in a previous paragraph thus:
"Chapter XLII.-The Order of Ministers in the Church.

The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from177 the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done sol from178 God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments,179 then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established180 in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit,181 to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus saith the Scripture in a certain place, "I will appoint their bishops182 in righteousness, and their deacons183 in faith."184

Which raises a few questions.
Does the title [?] of 'apostle' necessarily die with the generation of Jesus?
Must 'apostles be appointed' by Jesus?
Or can they be appointed by god as Paul claims he was?
If the latter, then we are no longer restricted to those who are thought to be of the generation of JC.
Paul, and other apostles like him, those who never claimed to receive their 'commission' from Christ personally but directly from god, even perhaps by revelation, could still be appointing church officials many decades after the alleged time of the crucifixion according to gospels chronoogy.
I note that the question of authority is strong in the writings of Paul.

The second group of church officials are those who were not appointed by an apostle but instead:
" afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blame-lessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all"
[Note all the conditions...eminemt, consent, etc]
Now if we focus on the word 'afterwards' then it seems that there is a clear division of eras envisaged, an apostolic age and a post apostolic age. But that does not help us with chronology unless we decide apostles must be from one generation only and that Paul would not qualify if authority had to be directly from JC as outlined mainly by author "Luke".
The practical application and contemporary understanding of the term 'apostle' is obviously a major consideration.

If I understand correctly this issue, the appointment, role and suitablity of church leaders is one that is addressed, purportedly by Paul, in the Pastoral Epistles.
They are frequently dated by some early to mid 2nd century [I note there is a thread about the PEs current here] yet claim to be written several decades earlier.
I have read that the PEs were written partly in response to the issues of justifying church hierachial authority and can be seen as a period in the history of the church when it was actively seeking to establish hierachial validity by invoking a chain of succession of apostolic authority. A subject also covered by "Luke".
And I have read that that period is thought to be in the mid to late 2nd century with the PEs dated somewhere [early] within that range.
Can we see this section from 1 "Clement'' as being in a similar vein?
cheers
yalla

andrewcriddle

I would say that Paul claimed to have received a commission personally from the risen Christ just like the other apostles (and that he was the last so to do), see the first part of 1 Corinthians 15.

Andrew Criddle

yalla

Gidday Andrew,
Galatians 1.12 " ..the gospel...came through a revelation of Jesus Christ...
1.15 "....he who had set me apart before I was born was pleased to reveal his Son in me...."
2.7 "I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised , just as Peter...to the circumcised
2.8 "..for he who worked through Peter ....worked through me also...'

I take this to me that god, through revelation of JC, entrusted Paul with the gospel.

Some time after the alleged crucifixion.
And without using gospel coloured glasses we do not need to assume or presume that those mentioned in 1 Cor 15 were followers of JC but could have undergone a scriptures based revelation just as Paul had.Note also that the apostles do not necessarily include Cephas who witnessed his 'appearance' of JC in verse 5 and the apostles were subsequent to that appearance see v.7 "...then to all the apostles.

So we cannot date the apostles as being of the generation of JC according to the gospels chronology. This is post crucifixion. How long after is shadowy.
And, just as Paul claims apostolic authority from revelation/god so could others even later perhaps.
Apollos perhaps, for example?
I wonder how the mechanics, the logistics of establishing a church and its subsequent hierachy actually went.
An apostle enters a town/city, lets call it Atown,and starts a church, establishes officials, perhaps he dies or moves on and then, later, stage 2 occurs when the church appoints its own new officials as outlined, perhaps, in 1 "Clem".
Now what about other cities, those not visited by the conventional scenario of apostles from the 'Great Commission" [of whom paul was not a member], the first wave of apostles including perhaps the founder of the church in Atown?
Does Atown send out 'apostles' to convert other places, call one of them Btown, spreading 'the word'?
Does Btown receive 'apostle[s]' that establish a Christian church there? [How else does a church in Btown become established?]
If so, then our chronolgy of dating apostles from the generation of JC is made irrelevant.
We can start the apostolic era for Btown maybe decades after that era finished in Atown.
Just how, by whose authority, was the word spread during the second century and later?
Was not this question of authority, particularly relating to the hierachy of the church, a major vexatious issue in the mid/later second century?
Isn't this part of the subject material in the Didache?
In the Pastorals?
In the writings of church fathers?

I submit that the section you outlined in 1 "Clem" need not refer to a first century time but can be seen, by itself, as an indicator of a time, decades later, when the questions of power and authority were major consideration of the various churches.
cheers
yalla

andrewcriddle

Hi yalla

This is IMO a good argument and I had to think about it.

Again IMO its main weakness is the particular situation behind 1 Clement.

It is a letter from Christians at Rome to Christians at Corinth. Now neither Corinth or Rome are Btowns they were both evangelised by the early apostles such as Peter and Paul; hence when the letter speaks of those appointed by apostles it probably means those of the first Christian generation. If the letter involved churches which were evangelised only later then your argument would IMO be stronger.

Andrew Criddle

schilling.klaus

this is a lie invented by the forger of the epistle.
of course the forger addressed all Catholic communities
in an attempt to enforce Roman primacy due to apostolic succession.

that's what propagandistic charlatans try to force you to believe.
but of course Peter and Paul are ahistorical fraudulent fictions,
and only credulous people believe in churches build by these
or any other of the (all fraudulently fictional) apostles of the NT.

Klaus Schilling

yalla

Gidday Andrew,
Good response.
I tend to agree with Klaus, although I would not state it so bluntly.
The letter, 1 'Clem' does purport to be a letter from Rome to Corinth.
But someone [?] has pointed out that Rome was hardly likely to have had the authority in the first century, that it later acquired, to tell another city church how to run their show.
As Klaus points out orthodox legend has Rome being evangelised by Peter and Paul but the writings of Paul himself do not appear to substantiate that claim. Paul knows no Peter as a founder of the Roman church, or at least he fails to make mention of such in the epistle usually assumed to be directed to the Romans [I'm not entirely sure that "Romans" should be given that title].
And Paul himslf does not belong to that illustrious group of initial apostles that "Luke' has resulting from the Great Commission.
And again, its only conventional orthodox dating that puts Paul in the period of 40-60ish. There have been threads here which question, without conclusion or agreement I recollect, the whole basis for dating his era.
But a letter, purporting to be written soon after that era would adopt the conventional wisdom, re Paul/Peter/Rome /Corinth, and utilise that as a given.
If 1 'Clem' were written at a later date, say mid 2nd century, and be part of a conscious attempt to develop an apostoic succession and monoepiscipalian authority hegemonic ideology [blimey did I just type that?] then it would have to incorporate the orthodox legendary material.
Part of that would include referring to Peter and Paul as of 'our generation' [1 Clem 5.1] which is used to place the letter in the first century. And even that is not as precise as it appears at first glance because it is a comparison to Hebrew Bible [OT] characters such as Moses and David and co., where a generational divide has occurred from pre-Jesus to post-Jesus, from OT to NT, from Judaism to Christianity.
None of this is set in concrete for me but I do suspect that 1 'Clem' is a political document from a later age.
cheers
yalla