DCHindley

Well, actually, that was Holl again. His 1900 list of all authors cited in the Sacra Parallela selected a different passage from PG 95.1473 to attribute to Clement of Alex.

Karl Holl, Fragmente Vornicänischer Kirchenväter Aus Den Sacra Parallela (1900, Texte Und Untersuchungen XX, Heft 2, PG 13)

25) angeblich aus einem 9. Clemensbrief.— Erhalten in K 22 v.

Lemma τοῦ αὐτον ἐκ τῆς θ επιστολῆς. Das vorausgehende Citat (Nr. 1) hat das Lemma τοῦ ἁγιου Κλήμεντος Ῥώμης ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Κορινθίους ἐπιστολῆς. Aber das Kapitel Aa in K, in welchem das Citat steht, ist gründlich verwirrt (vgl. TU, Neue Folge 1,1 S. 211 ff.).

ἥνα καὶ γενώμεθα βουληθέντος αἠτοῦ οὐκ ὄντες πρίν γενέ-
σθαι καὶ γενόμενοι ἀπολαύοωμεν τῶν δι’ ἡμάς γενομένων
διὰ τοῦτο ἐσμὲν ἄνθρωποι καὶ φρόνηοιν εχομεν καὶ λόγον
παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβόντες.

The Greek citation had been previously noted by Holl in Die Sacra parallela des Johannes Damascenus (in Texte Und Untersuchungen XVI (new series, band one) Heft 1) page 211 (it is citation #2 from Vatican 1236), but not the text.

FWIW, Lightfoot, S. Clement of Rome: The two epistles to the Corinthians (pg 213), notes that

The resemblance of these words to a passage in the genuine epistle has been pointed out already (see the note on § 38). I have hazarded the conjecture that for Θ [9] we should read Є (Ε, 5)(see p. 21). In this case the five epistles in the collection referred to might have been (1) the Epistle to James, (2), (3) the Two Epistles to Virgins, (4), (5) the Two Epistles to the Corinthians, so that the fragment may have been taken from the lost end of our Second Epistle. A Second hypothesis would be, that it is intended for the passage in the First Epistle (§ 38) which it resembles, especially as we are told (see above pp. ax, 109) that these same writers just before have quoted a fragment from the First Epistle (§ 33) with very considerable variations from our existing text. But if so, the quotation is very loose indeed; and moreover the form of the heading seems to show that it was taken from a different epistle from the preceding passage. Another and very obvious alternative is that other spurious Clementine epistles were known to the ancients, which have not come down to us.

FWIW, the passage it supposedly resembles is 1 Clement XXXVIII (ch 38), last 2 sentences:

He who made us and fashioned us, having prepared His bountiful gifts for us before we were born, introduced us into His world. Since, therefore, we receive all these things from Him, we ought for everything to give Him thanks.

DCH

stephan huller

Under Lightfoot's reconstruction there would be theoretically two collects of letters - one for c of a and one for c of r.

andrewcriddle

As Stephan has already pointed out, Lightfoot, after the discovery of the end of the second letter of Clement (without the passage quoted by Leontius) retracted the suggestion that the passage was from the second letter and argued that Mai was misleading concerning the explicitness of the attribution to Clement.

Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

The key it would seem is the identification of on the servants of God as from the 21 letter of Clement the stromatist in the earliest manuscript of sacred parallels. Is there any reason to doubt this attribution?

stephan huller

Read it over again. Sounds like Clement of a. Just like on almsgiving

stephan huller

On the kingdom of heaven looks pretty generic. Could be anyone (although the interest in SEEING things divine is very Clement of a-like)

stephan huller

'his ninth epistle'

ἥνα καὶ γενώμεθα βουληθέντος αἠτοῦ οὐκ ὄντες πρίν γενέσθαι καὶ γενόμενοι ἀπολαύοωμεν τῶν δι’ ἡμάς γενομένων διὰ τοῦτο ἐσμὲν ἄνθρωποι καὶ φρόνηοιν εχομεν καὶ λόγον παρ’ αὐτοῦ λαβόντες.

1 Clement 38:3,4:

εκ ποιου ταφου και σκοτους ο πλασας ημας και δημιουργησας εισηγαγεν εις τον κοσμον αυτου, προετοιμασας τας ευεργεσιας αυτου πριν ημας γεννηθηναι. ταυτα ουν παντα εξ αυτου εχοντες οφειλομεν κατα παντα ευχαριστειν αυτω· ω η δοξα εις τους αιωνας των αιωνων. αμην.

DCHindley

Apples & oranges, Stephan.

Lightfoot only notes that this is one of several miscellaneous citations of a work of Clement of Rome. The gist of the matter is that if one emends "9" to "5" then the letter is possibly 2nd Clement (which is really a Homily). At the time he wrote the last part of 2 Clement was still missing. So he proposes an alternative that the reference is somehow connected to the end of 1 Clem chapter 38.

Andrew reminds us that Lightfoot dropped that first hypothesis when a ms with the missing end of 2 Clement was discovered, which clearly had no such passage. If he also expressed the opinion that Mai overstated the certainty of the attribution of this passage to Clement of Rome, it must presumably be on the basis that there are two variant introductions to this passage:

τοῦ αὐτον ἐκ τῆς θ επιστολῆς
From [the previously mentioned Clement of Rome's] 9th epistle ...

τοῦ ἁγιου Κλήμεντος Ῥώμης ἐκ τῆς πρὸς Κορινθίους ἐπιστολῆς
From the Holy Clement of Rome's Epistle to the Corinthians

So the attribution to "letter 9" (otherwise unknown) is opposed by an alternate attribution to CoR's "Epistle to the Corinthians" (presumably 1 Clement).

I quoted Lightfoot, "Another and very obvious alternative is that other spurious Clementine epistles were known to the ancients, which have not come down to us," because it seems to agree with Andrew's opinion that there may have been some now lost corpus of spurious epistles attributed to Clement of Rome.

That being said, if as Andrew thinks it is unlikely that a genuine collection of letters of Clement of Alexandria would disappear without much trace while many of his prose works survive, how equally unlikely is it that a spurious collection of letters of Clement of Rome would disappear when so much pseudo-Clementine literature has survived, including letters of Peter to Clement, Peter to James, and James to Peter?

DCH

stephan huller

Here's my problem with the identification of 'his ninth letter' with the author of 1 Clement. The last sentence is a formulation not found in either 1 Clement or 2 Clement. It is quintessentially Clement of Alexandria. But I went through 1 Clement and 2 Clement and I noticed:

- the author of 1 Clement/2 Clement never uses φρόνηοις, not even once.
- the author does not know or use the Gospel of John
- the Logos doctrine in 1 Clement 27 "εν λογω της μεγαλωσυνης αυτου συνεστησατο τα παντα, και εν λογω δυναται αυτα καταστρεψαι."
- the Logos doctrine in 1 Clement 33:

I don't find anything which rises to the level of saying what the fragment does about human phronesis receiving the word as a gift from God. Clement of Alexandria on the other hand ...

DCHindley

Is a form of the word φρόνηοις (understanding/wisdom) found in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies or Recognitions, especially in relation to λόγος?

Andrew had suggested that because the pseudo-Clementine literature portrays its "Clement" character as a philosophical version of the future Clement, bishop of Rome, the authors of these works seemed to have conflated the Bishop of Rome with Clement of Alexandria, who was much more at home with philosophical terminology.

As you noted, this technical term from philosophy (i.e., φρόνηοις) has no place in the vocabulay of the author of 1 Clement. I'm not convinced that the more philosophic Clement of the Clementine literature is due to colflation. There is the other association of Clement of Rome and the real life Clemens of the elite class. Surely they might try to portray him as acquainted with "philosophy," at least as taught by their sophists (educators).

DCH