aa5874

In order to do a SERIOUS inquiry into the Anonymous letter attributed to some Clement of Rome we cannot PRESUME anything first.

The mere fact that the letter is anonymous means that dating the letter by its author is virtually impossible.

However, apologetic sources have attributed the anonymous letter to some Clement who was Bishop of Rome.

It has been found that the time when Clement was Bishop is completely uncertain and this uncertainty also means that the chronology of Bishops before and After Clement is in chaos.

Next, the anonymous letter mentioned certain characters like PAUL whom it is claimed wrote an epistle to the Church but as usual, there is NO credible evidence that Paul wrote any letters in the 1st century.

The earliest dating of the Pauline letters [P 46] by Paleography is the mid 2nd-3rd century

1. The letter is anonymous.

2. The time when Clement was Bishop is NOT certain.

3. The Pauline letters [P 46] are dated mid 2nd-3rd century.

4. "Against Heresies" first mentions Clement and the anonymous letter but is a source that is NOT credible or is Contradicted by other apologetic sources--most people of Rome claimed Clement was the second Bishop NOT the fourth.


So, based on the Present available evidence, P 46, the anonymous letter which mentions a Pauline Epistle can only be dated to some after or around the mid 2nd-3rd century .

There is insufficient credible evidence for any earlier date.

sotto voce

Whatever that means; and there is no reason to suppose that the relevant parts were not written at an early stage. And whatever it means, the important fact is that agreed canon did not recognise hierarchy. Yet, a complex hierarchy was devised, in blatant contradiction of the NT, but alleged to relate to the NT. The alleged first letter of Clement, full of risible plagiarism, evidently concocted to invent a Roman primacy, is at least forced to recognise the polity left by the apostles. That fact has some value in dating it. The traditional date range fits with both history and the several warnings of the apostles re infiltration of false teachers.

aa5874

You have PRESUMED your own history. It has NOT ever been established that that there were actual apostles and that they actually warned anyone.

Please Identify a credible source of antiquity that gives an accurate historical account on an Apostle in the 1st century BEFORE the Fall of the Temple c 70 CE.

andrewcriddle

Clement to the Corinthians is sufficiently well known sufficiently early to make a date after the death of Hadrian unlikely. Welborn basically agrees. I don't find it plausible that a writer in the time of Hadrian would attempt to give the impression to the careful reader that he was writing in the reign of Domitian. At least this idea needs to have some solid evidence in its favour.

IF the attribution of the letter to Clement goes back to Hegesippus then this is early enough to have weight.

IMO the letter is clearly earlier than the works of Ignatius but since Ignatius may well have been martyred during the reign of Hadrian this may not help much.

One possible testimony to anti-Christian measures by Domitian is the reference in Pliny (c 110 CE) to people who had renounced Christianity 25 years before. We don't know their reasons but it may have been official disapproval of the new sect.

Andrew Criddle

aa5874

Again, your claim is erroneous. The letter is ANONYMOUS and is first mentioned in "Against Heresies" but there is another problem.

Our present copy of "Against Heresies" is NOT original and is NOT even dated to the 2nd century.

We do NOT have any direct evidence for knowledge of the Pauline writings.

jdl

Can you expand on what you mean by this? Which parts of Clement do you think suggest that time frame?
Is there a reason to think it does?
Welborn points out that Pliny would have been in Rome at the time of the supposed persecutions and asks how Pliny could then claim a complete lack of experience in this area.
-- Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.96

Actually, I wonder if you or anyone else has heard much about Hermann Detering's work on Pliny? I believe it's only available in German, though I'm led to believe he argues that the entirety of Book 10 of Pliny's letters is pseudepigraphical. I have no idea what his method is for that conclusion, but needless to say I'm intrigued.

Joseph

mountainman

The additional Pliny letters to Hadrian were not mentioned by anyone before the 15th century, at which time a manuscript was suddenly "discovered" in the archives. Somehow, also surprisingly, this manuscript was subsequently "lost". Detering may have obtained data from work of Arthur Drews. See The Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus by Arthur Drews, The Roman Witnesses, 1. Pliny and Suetonius:

tanya

Thank you Pete, it is an important point.

This may or may not be important. Here is the link to the letters 'in the original Latin'. Were they not written, originally, in Greek?

That manuscript in a monastery may have been a Latin version, but does that mean that Pliny himself wrote in Latin? Wouldn't official Roman government documents have been written in Greek?

Duvduv

What are the chances that the 15th century priest Giacondo who "discovered" the Pliny letter was an unbiased source of a document whose original doesn't exist anymore??

jdl

Surely you mean Pliny's letters to Trajan?

Anyway, I lied. I do have an idea what Detering's method is. Wherever it was I read about his work, it was described as "new" and some kind of "stylometry", so I know that much. I believe the work in question is this one. Detering has written a post, Adieu, Plinius!, that I can't any make sense of with Google Translate. All I can get from it is his suspicion that Tertullian is not a reliable witness to the letters, that all the other church fathers are dependent on him, and that our only existing manuscripts are late and/or apparently missing (just the thought of researching manuscript history is making me wince).

I like Detering. I thought The Falsified Paul was fascinating. I wish he would publish in a language I can read.

Joseph