Toto

I thought that the only one who dated Clement that early (other than Christians who date everything early) was Alvar Ellegard in Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ (or via: amazon.co.uk), searchable on Amazon.

The consensus dating appears to depend on Eusebius.

Ben C Smith

George Edmundson argued for a date of 70 for 1 Clement in his Bampton Lectures of 1913. The published book of his lectures, The Church in Rome in the First Century, is available online. He discusses the date of 1 Clement in the seventh lecture. Interestingly, in that same lecture he is happy to date the Didache to century IV. Century IV!

J. A. T. Robinson references Edmundson several times in Redating the New Testament.

Edmundson takes virtually every thread of early church tradition quite seriously, BTW.

Ben.

Peter Kirby

There are scholars other than Robinson, Ellegard, and Edmundson who argue for a pre-destruction date of 1 Clement.

Here is the thread I may have had in mind.

Here is another thread.

I take exception to the typical smear of Robinson. Rather than a hidebound conservative (though those types like to misuse him), he's a maverick, attempting to push the limits of scholarship. His is a mirror image of the Dutch Radical chronology, with all the same mannerism and rationality, just with the conclusions reversed.

regards,
Peter Kirby

james-2-24

An answer has already been given; Pauls epistles. I'm curious as to what this means for your investigations? Are you trying to find out whether an christian movements even existed pre-war? Or the nature of them?

rlogan

First Clement is obviously a spurious liturgical tract masquerading as a letter wherin the motivation (buried so deeply amidst the vague piffle about some crisis in leadership) is to order subservience of churches to central authority.

Christian Bishops in mid first century? Sure, sure. That's why Josephus and other historians spilled so much ink on this big movement. Their parades were so large they had to close off the streets.

Vespasian was forced to negotiate with the Christian Bishop's Council in the famous Treaty of Flavianum, presided over by the Easter Bunny and Paul Bunyan.

ChandraRama

I was curious to find out if the christ movements rose independent of the historical jesus movements. And if they converged at some point. Jesus puzzle and the Mack's book on the "who wrote New testament" hints at this possibility.

robto

If you remember that "Christ" is simply the Greek translation of "Messiah", then your question becomes, "were there those who believed in the Messiah, independent of those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah?" To which the answer seems to be "yes, but..." There were many different conceptions of the Messiah or Son of Man or archangel that was to come. For some Jews, the Messiah wasn't an important concept at all, however. (IIRC, Philo never uses the term.)

In any case, Jesus's followers drew on a wide spectrum of such ideas (one scholar says they "ransacked the available categories" - a beautifully apt phrase), and reinterpreted them to apply to Jesus.

ChandraRama

messiah means oiled. But what does exactly christ means in greek?