§ 162. Clement of Rome.

(I.) The Epistle of Clemens Rom. to the Corinthians. Only the first is genuine, the second so-called Ep. of Cl. is a homily of later date. Best editions by Philotheos Bryennios (Τοῦ ἐν ἁγίοις πατρὸς ἡμῶν Κλήμεντος ἐπισκόπου Ῥώμης αἰ δύο πρὸς Καρινθίους έπιστολαί etc. Ἑν Κώνσταντινοπόλει, 1875. With prolegomena, commentary and facsimiles at the end, 188 pp. text, and ρξθ ́or169 prolegomena); Hilgenfeld (second ed. Leipz. 1876, with prolegomena, textual notes and conjectures); Von Gebhardt & Harnack (sec. ed. 1876, with proleg., notes, and Latin version); Funk (1878, with Latin version and notes); and Lightfoot (with notes, Lond. 1869, and Appendix containing the newly-discovered portions, and an English Version, 1877).

All the older editions from the Alexandrian MS. first published by Junius, 1633, are partly superseded by the discovery of the new and complete MS. in Constantinople, which marks an epoch in this chapter of church history.

(II.) R. A. Lipsius: De Clementis Rom. Epistola ad Corinth. priore disquisitio. Lips. 1856 (188 pages). Comp. his review of recent editions in the "Jenaer Literaturzeitung." Jan. 13, 1877.

B. H. Cowper: What the First Bishop of Rome taught. The Ep. of Clement of R. to the Cor., with an Introduction and Notes. London, 1867.

Jos. Mullooly: St. Clement Pope and Martyr, and his Basilica in Rome. Rome, second ed. 1873. The same in Italian. Discusses the supposed house and basilica of Clement, but not his works.

Jacobi: Die beiden Briefe des Clemens v. Rom., in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1876, p. 707 sqq.

Funk: Ein theologischer Fund, in the Tüb. "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1876, p. 286 sqq.

Donaldson: The New MS. of Clement of Rome. In the "Theolog. Review." 1877, p. 35 sqq.

Wieseler: Der Brief des röm. Clemens an die Kor., in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol." 1877. No. III.

Renan: Les évangiles. Paris 1877. Ch. xv. 311–338.

C. J. H. Ropes: The New MS. of Clement of Rome, in the "Presb. Quarterly and Princeton Review." N. York 1877, P. 325–343. Contains a scholarly examination of the new readings, and a comparison of the concluding prayer with the ancient liturgies.

The relevant sections in Hilgenfeld (Apost. Väter, 85–92), Donaldson (Ap. Fath., 113–190), Sprinzl (Theol. d. Apost. Väter, 21 sqq., 57 sqq.), Salmon in Smith and Wace, I. 554 sqq., and Uhlhorn in Herzog², sub Clemens Rom. III. 248–257.

Comp. full lists of editions, translations, and discussions on Clement, before and after 1875, in the Prolegomena of von Gebhardt & Harnack, XVIII.-XXIV.; Funk, XXXII.-XXXVI.; Lightfoot, p. 28 sqq., 223 sqq., and 393 sqq., and Richardson, Synopsis, I sqq.

The first rank among the works of the post-Apostolic age belongs to the "Teaching of the Apostles," discovered in 1883.^11901190    See above p. 184 sq., and my monograph, third revised edition, 1889.190 Next follow the letters of Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp.

I. Clement, a name of great celebrity in antiquity, was a disciple of Paul and Peter, to whom he refers as the chief examples for imitation. He may have been the same person who is mentioned by Paul as one of his faithful fellow-workers in Philippi (Phil. 4:3); or probably a Roman who was in some way connected with the distinguished Flavian family, and through it with the imperial household, where Christianity found an early lodgment.^11911191    There are six different conjectures. 1) Clement was the Philippian Clement mentioned by Paul. So Origen, Eusebius, Jerome. He may have been a Greek or a Roman laboring for a time in Philippi and afterwards in Rome. 2) A distant relative of the emperor Tiberius. So the pseudoClementine romances which are historically confused and worthless. 3) The Consul Flavius Clemens, Domitian’s cousin, who was put to death by him for "atheism" i.e. the Christian faith, a.d. 95, while his wife Domitilla (who founded the oldest Christian cemetery in Rome) was banished to an island. So Hilgenfeld, and, less confidently, Harnack. But our Clement died a natural death, and if he had been so closely related to the emperor, the fact would have been widely, spread in the church. 4) A nephew of Flavius Clemens. So the martyr acts of Nereus and Achilles, and Cav. de Rossi. 5) A son of Flavius Clemens. So Ewald. But the sons of the Consul, whom Domitian appointed his successors on the throne, were mere boys when Clement was bishop of Rome. 6) A Jewish freedman or son of a freedman belonging to the household of Flavius Clemens. Plausibly advocated by Lightfoot (p. 265). The imperial household seems to have been the centre of the Roman church from the time of Paul’s imprisonment (Phil. 4:22). Slaves and freedmen were often very intelligent and cultivated. Hermas )Vis. I. 1) and Pope Callistus )Philos. IX. 12) were formerly slaves. Funk concludes: res non liquet. So also Uhlhorn in Herzog.191 His Epistle betrays a man of classical culture, executive wisdom, and thorough familiarity with the Septuagint Bible. The last seems to indicate that he was of Jewish parentage.^11921192    Renan (p. 313) thinks that he was a Roman Jew. So also Lightfoot. But Justin Martyr had the same familiarity with the Old Testament, though he was a Gentile by birth and education.192 What we know with certainty is only this, that he stood at the head of the Roman congregation at the close of the first century. Yet tradition is divided against itself as to the time of his administration; now making him the first successor of Peter, now, with more probability, the third. According to Eusebius he was bishop from the twelfth year of Domitian to the third of Trajan (A. D. 92 to 101). Considering that the official distinction between bishops and presbyters was not yet clearly defined in his time, he may have been co-presbyter with Linus and Anacletus, who are represented by some as his predecessors, by others as his successors.^11931193    § 52, p. 166. Bryennios discusses this question at length in his Prolegomena, and comes to the conclusion that Clement was the third bishop of Rome, and the author of both Epistles to the Corinthians. He identifies him with the Clement in Phil. 4:3.193

Later legends have decked out his life in romance, both in the interest of the Catholic church and in that of heresy. They picture him as a noble and highly educated Roman who, dissatisfied with the, wisdom and art of heathenism, journeyed to Palestine, became acquainted there with the apostle Peter, and was converted by him; accompanied him on his missionary tours; composed many books in his name; was appointed by him his successor as bishop of Rome, with a sort of supervision over the whole church; and at last, being banished under Trajan to the Taurian Chersonesus, died the glorious death of a martyr in the waves of the sea. But the oldest witnesses, down to Eusebius and Jerome, know nothing of his martyrdom. The Acta Martyrii Clementis (by Simon Metaphrastes) make their appearance first in the ninth century. They are purely fictitious, and ascribe incredible miracles to their hero.

It is very remarkable that a person of such vast influence in truth and fiction, whose words were law, who preached the duty of obedience and submission to an independent and distracted church, whose vision reached even to unknown lands beyond the Western sea, should inaugurate, at the threshold of the second century, that long line of pontiffs who have outlasted every dynasty in Europe, and now claim an infallible authority over the consciences of two hundred millions of Christians.^11941194    "Clément Romain." says the sceptical Renan, once a student of Roman Catholic theology in St. Sulpice."ne fut pas seulement un personnage réel, ce fut un personnage de premier ordre, un vrai chef d’Église, un évêque, avant que l’épiscopat fût nettement constitué j’ oserais presque dire un pape, si ce mot ne faisait ici un trop fort anachronisme. Son autorité passa pour la plus grande de toutes en Italie, en Grèce, en Macédonie, durant les dix dernières années du Iersiècle. A la limite de l’ âge apostolique, il fut comme unapôtre, un épigone de la grande génération des disciples de Jésus, une des colonnes de cette Eglise de Rome, qui, depuis la destruction de Jérusalem, devenait de plus en plus le centre du christianisme."194

II. From this Clement we have a Greek epistle to the Corinthians. It is often cited by the church fathers, then disappeared, but was found again, together with the fragments of the second epistle, in the Alexandrian codex of the Bible (now in the British Museum), and published by Patricius Junius (Patrick Young) at Oxford in 1633.^11951195    The Alexandrian Bible codex dates from the fifth century, and was presented by Cyril Lucar, of Constantinople, to King Charles 1. in 1628. Since 1633 the Ep. of Cl. has been edited about thirty times from this single MS. It lacks the concluding chapters (57-66) in whole or in part, and is greatly blurred and defaced. It was carefully reexamined and best edited by Tischendorf (1867 and 1873), Lightfoot (1869 and 1877), Laurent (1870), and Gebhardt (in his first ed. 1875). Their conjectures have been sustained in great part by the discovery of the Constantinopolitan MS. See the critical Addenda in the Append. of Lightfoot, p. 396 sqq.195 A second, less ancient, but more perfect manuscript from the eleventh century, containing the missing chapters of the first (with the oldest written prayer) and the whole of the second Epistle (together with other valuable documents), was discovered by Philotheos Bryennios,^11961196    At that time metropolitan of Serrae (μετροπολίτης Σερρῶν)-an ancient see Heraclea), in Macedonia—afterwards of Nicomedia. This Eastern prelate was most cordially welcomed by the scholars of the West, Catholic and Protestant, to an honored place in the republic of Christian learning. His discovery is of inestimable value. In his prolegomena and notes—all in Greek—he shows considerable knowledge of the previous editions of Clement (except that of Lightfoot, 1869) and of modern German literature. It is amusing to find familiar names turned into Greek, as Neander (ὁ Νέανδρος), Gieseler (ὁ Γισελέριος), Hefele (ὁ Ἕφελος), Dressel (ὁ Δρεσσέλιος), Hilgenfeld (ὁ Ἱλγεμφέλδος), Jacobson (ὁ Ἰακωβσόνιος), Tischendorf (Κωνσταν́τῖνος ὁ Τισενδόρφιος), Thiersch (ὁ θείρσιος), Schroeckh (ὁ Σροίκχιος), Schwegler, (ὁ Σουέγλερος), Schliemann (ὁ Σλιμάννος), Reithmayr (ὁ Ρεϊθμάϋρος), Uhlhorn (ὁ Οὐλχόρνιος ἐν τῇ Real Encykl. von Herzog ἐν λέξ. Clemens von ROM τομ. Β ́. σελ 721; p. ξζ ́), etc. He complains, however, of " the higher" or " lofty criticism" (ὑψηλὴ κριτική) and the " episcophobia" (ἐπισκοφοβία) of certain Germans, and his own criticism is checked by his reverence for tradition, which leads him to accept the Second Epistle of Clement as genuine, contrary to the judgment of the best scholars.196 in the convent library of the patriarch of Jerusalem in Constantinople, and published in 1875.^11971197    The Constantinopolitan codex belongs to the library of the Convent of the Holy Sepulchre (τοῦ Παναγίου Τάφου)in the Fanar or Phanar, the Greek district of Constantinople, whose inhabitants, the Fanariotes, were originally employed as secretaries and transcribers of documents. It is a small 8vo parchment of 120 leaves, dates from a.d. 1056, is clearly and carefully written in cursive characters, with accents, spiritus, punctuation (but without jota subscriptum), and contains in addition the second Epistle of Clement in full, the Greek Ep. of Barnabas, the larger Greek recension of the 12 Ignatian Epistles, the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (διδαχὴ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων), and a work of Chrysostom (a Synopsis of the Old and New Testments). The value of this text consists chiefly in the new matter of the first Ep. (about one-tenth of the whole, from the close of ch. 57 to the end), and the remainder of the second. It presents nearly four hundred variations. The Constantinopolitan codex is preferred by Hilgenfeld, the Alexandrian by Lightfoot, Gebhardt and Harnack. The Didache is far more important, but was not published till 1883.197 Soon afterwards a Syriac translation was found in the library of Jules Mohl, of Paris (d. 1876).^11981198    This MS. which escaped the attention of French scholars, is now in Cambridge. It was written in the year 1170, in the Convent of Mar Saliba, at Edessa. It contains, with the exception of the Apocalypse, the entire New Testament in the Harclean recension (616) of the Philoxenian version (508), and the two Epistles of Clement between the Catholic and Pauline Epistles (instead of at the close, as in the Alexandrian Cod.), as if they were equal in authority to the canonical books. Bishop Lightfoot (Appendix to S. Clemens p. 238) says, that this Syriac version is conscientious and faithful, but with a tendency to run into paraphrase, and that it follows the Alex. rather than the Constantinopolitan text, but presents also some independent readings.198 We have thus three independent texts (A, C, S), derived, it would seem, from a common parent of the second century. The newly discovered portions shed new light on the history of papal authority and liturgical worship, as we have pointed out in previous chapters.^11991199    See § 50, p. 157, and § 66, p. 226, 228.199

This first (and in fact the only) Epistle to the Corinthians was sent by the Church of God in Rome, at its own impulse, and unasked, to the Church of God in Corinth, through three aged and faithful Christians: Claudius Ephebus, Valerius Biton, and Fortunatus.^12001200    Mentioned at the close in ch. 65 (which in the Alex. text is ch. 59). Claudius and Valerius may have been connected with the imperial household as freedmen (Comp. Phil. 4:22). Fortunatus has been identified by some with the one mentioned 1 Cor. 16:17, as a younger member of the household of Stephanas in Corinth.200 It does not bear the name of Clement, and is written in the name of the Roman congregation, but was universally regarded as his production.^12011201    By the author of the Catalogue of contents prefixed to the Alexandrian codex, generally called Cod. A: by Dionysius of Corinth, in his letter to Soter of Rome (Euseb. IV, 23); Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. I. 3, § 3); Clement of Alexandria, who often quotes from it; Origen (Comm. in Joan. VI. § 36 and other places); Eusebius )H. E. III. 16; IV. 23; V. 6); Jerome )De Virisillustr. c. 15). Polycarp already used it, as appears from the similarity of several passages. All modern critics (with the exception of Baur, Schwegler, Volkmar, and Cotterill) admit the Clementine origin, which is supported by the internal evidence of style and doctrine. Cotterill’s Peregrinus Proteus (1879), which puts the Clementine Epistles in their present shape among the Stephanic fabrications, is an ingenious literary curiosity, but no serious argument. Renan says (p. 319): "Peu d’ écrits sontaussi authentiques."201 It stood in the highest esteem in ancient times, and continued in public use in the Corinthian church and in several other churches down to the beginning of the fourth century.^12021202    Dionysius of Corinth (A. D. 170) first mentions the liturgical use of the Epistle in his church. Eusebius (III. 16) testifies from his own knowledge that it was read in very many churches (ἐν πλείσταις ἐκκλησίαις) both in former times and in his own day. Comp. Jerome, De Vir. ill. c. 15.202 This accounts for its incorporation in the Alexandrian Bible Codex, but it is properly put after the Apocalypse and separated from the apostolic epistles.

And this indicates its value. It is not apostolical, not inspired—far from it—but the oldest and best among the sub-apostolic writings both in form and contents. It was occasioned by party differences and quarrels in the church of Corinth, where the sectarian spirit, so earnestly rebuked by Paul in his first Epistle, had broken out afresh and succeeded in deposing the regular officers (the presbyter-bishops). The writer exhorts the readers to harmony and love, humility, and holiness, after the pattern of Christ and his apostles, especially Peter and Paul, who had but recently sealed their testimony with their blood. He speaks in the highest terms of Paul who, "after instructing the whole [Roman] world in righteousness, and after having reached the end of the West, and borne witness before the rulers, departed into the holy place, leaving the greatest example of patient endurance."^12031203    1 Ch. 5. The τέρμα τῆς δύσεως must be Spain, whither Paul intended to go, Rom. 15:24, 28. To a Roman writing in Rome, Spain or Britain was the Western terminus of the earth. Comp. Strabo II.c. 1, 4; III. 2. The ἡγούμενοι are the Roman magistrates; others refer the word specifically to Tigellinus and Nymphidius, the prefects of the praetorium in 67, or to Helium and Polycletus, who ruled in Rome during the absence of Nero in Greece in 67.203 He evinces the calm dignity and executive wisdom of the Roman church in her original simplicity, without hierarchical arrogance; and it is remarkable how soon that church recovered after the terrible ordeal of the Neronian persecution, which must have been almost an annihilation. He appeals to the word of God as the final authority, but quotes as freely from the Apocrypha as from the canonical Scriptures (the Septuagint). He abounds in free reminiscences of the teaching of Christ and the Apostles.^12041204    Funk gives a list of quotations and parallel passages, Patr. Apost. I. 566-570. From this it appears that 157 are from the O. T., including the Apocrypha and (apparently) the Assumption of Moses, 158 from the N. T., but only three of the latter are strict quotations (ch. 46 from Matt. 26:24, and Luke 17:2; ch. 2 and 61 from Tit. 3:1). Clement mentions by name only one book of the N. T., ἐπιστολὴ τοῦ μακαρίου Παύλου, with evident reference to I Cor. 1;10 sqq. Comp. also the lists of Scripture quotations in the ed. of Bryennios (p. 159-165), and G. and H. p. 144-155.204 He refers to Paul’s (First) Epistle to the Corinthians, and shows great familiarity with his letters, with James, First Peter, and especially the Epistle to the Hebrews, from which he borrows several expressions. Hence he is mentioned—with Paul, Barnabas, and Luke—as one of the supposed authors of that anonymous epistle. Origen conjectured that Clement or Luke composed the Hebrews under the inspiration or dictation of Paul.

Clement bears clear testimony to the doctrines of the Trinity ("God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who are the faith and the hope of the elect"), of the Divine dignity and glory of Christ, salvation only by his blood, the necessity of repentance and living faith, justification by grace, sanctification by the Holy Spirit, the unity of the church, and the Christian graces of humility, charity, forbearance, patience, and perseverance. In striking contrast with the bloody cruelties practiced by Domitian, he exhorts to prayer for the civil rulers, that God "may give them health, peace, concord, and stability for the administration of the government be has given them."^12051205    "When we remember," says Lightfoot, p. 268 sq., "that this prayer issued from the fiery furnace of persecution after experience of a cruel and capricious tyrant like Domitian, it will appear truly sublime—sublime in its utterances and still more sublime in its silence. Who would have grudged the Church, of Rome her primacy, if she had always spoken thus?" Ropes (l. c, p. 343): The sublimity of this prayer gains a peculiar sIgnificance when we remember that it was Domitian in whose behalf it was offered."205 We have here the echo of Paul’s exhortation to the Romans (Rom. 13) under the tyrant Nero. Altogether the Epistle of Clement is worthy of a disciple of the apostles, although falling far short of their writings in original simplicity, terseness, and force.

III. In regard to its theology, this epistle belongs plainly to the school of Paul and strongly resembles the Epistle to the Hebrews, while at the same time it betrays the influence of Peter also; both these apostles having, in fact, personally labored in the church of Rome, in whose name the letter is written, and having left the stamp of their mind upon it. There is no trace in it of an antagonism between Paulinism and Petrinism.^12061206    Renan (p. 314) call, .; his epistle "un beau morceau neutre, dont les disciples de Pierre et ceux de Paul durent se contenter également. Ilest probale qu’il fut un des agents les plus énergetiques de la grande Œuvre qué etait en train de s’ accomplir, je veux dire, de la réconciliation posthume de Pierre et de Paul de la fusior des deux partis, sans l’union desquels l’Œuvre du Christ ne pouvait que périr."206 Clement is the only one of the apostolic fathers, except perhaps Polycarp, who shows some conception of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. "All (the saints of the Old Testament)," says he,^12071207    Ch. 32. An echo of Paul’s teaching is found in Polycarp, Ad Phil. c.1, where he refers to "the firm root of their faith, preached to them from olden times, which remains to this day, and bears fruit in our Lord Jesus Christ."207 "became great and glorious, not through themselves, nor by their works, nor by their righteousness, but by the will of God. Thus we also, who are called by the will of God in Christ Jesus, are righteous not of ourselves, neither through our wisdom, nor through our understanding, nor through our piety, nor through our works, which we have wrought in purity of heart, but by faith, by which the almighty God justified all these from the beginning; to whom be glory to all eternity." And then Clement, precisely like Paul in Romans 6, derives sanctification from justification, and continues: "What, then, should we do, beloved brethren? Should we be slothful in good works and neglect love? By no means! But with zeal and courage we will hasten to fulfil every good work. For the Creator and Lord of all things himself rejoices in his works." Among the good works he especially extols love, and describes it in a strain which reminds one of Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13: "He who has love in Christ obeys the commands of Christ. Who can declare the bond of the love of God, and tell the greatness of its beauty? The height to which it leads is unspeakable. Love unites us with God; covers a multitude of sins; beareth all things, endureth all things. There is nothing mean in love, nothing haughty. It knows no division; it is not refractory; it does everything in harmony. In love have all the elect of God become perfect. Without love nothing is pleasing to God. In love has the Lord received us; for the love which he cherished towards us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us according to the will of God, and his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our soul."^12081208    Ch. 49.208 Hence all his zeal for the unity of the church. "Wherefore are dispute, anger, discord, division, and war among you? Or have we not one God and one Christ and one Spirit, who is poured out upon us, and one calling in Christ? Wherefore do we tear and sunder the members of Christ, and bring the body into tumult against itself, and go so far in delusion, that we forget that we are members one of another?"^12091209    Ch. 46. Comp. Eph. 4:3 sqq.209

Very beautifully also he draws from the harmony of the universe an incitement to concord, and incidentally expresses here the remarkable sentiment, perhaps suggested by the old legends of the Atlantis, the orbis alter, the ultima Thule, etc., that there are other worlds beyond the impenetrable ocean, which are ruled by the same laws of the Lord.^12101210    3 Ch. 20: Ὠκέανος ἀνθρώποις άπέραντος καὶ οἱ μετ’ αὐτὸν κόσμοι ταῖς αὐταῖς ταγαῖς τοῦ δεσπότου διευθύνονται. Lightfoot (p. 84) remarks on this passage: "Clement may possibly be referring to some known, but hardly accessible land, lying without the pillars of Hercules. But more probably he contemplated some unknown land in the far west beyond the ocean, like the fabled Atlantis of Plato, or the real America of modern discovery." Lightfoot goes on to say that this passage was thus understood by Irenaeus (II. 28, 2), Clement of Alexandria (Strom. V. 12), and Origen ) De Princ. II.6; In Ezech. VIII. 3), but that, at a later date, this opinion was condemned by Tertullian (De Pall. 2 Hermog. 25), Lactantius (Inst. II. 24), and Augustin )De Civit. Dei XVI. 9). For centuries the idea of Cosmas Indicopleustes that the earth was a plain surface and a parallelogram, prevailed in Christian literature.210

But notwithstanding its prevailing Pauline character, this epistle lowers somewhat the free evangelical tone of the Gentile apostle’s theology, softens its anti-Judaistic sternness, and blends it with the Jewish-Christian counterpart of St. James, showing that the conflict between the Pauline and Petrine views was substantially settled at the end of the first century in the Roman church, and also in that of Corinth.

Clement knows nothing of an episcopate above the presbyterate; and his epistle itself is written, not in his own name, but in that of the church at Rome. But he represents the Levitical priesthood as a type of the Christian teaching office, and insists with the greatest decision on outward unity, fixed order, and obedience to church rulers. He speaks in a tone of authority to a sister church of apostolic foundation, and thus reveals the easy and as yet innocent beginning of the papacy.^12111211    See especially chs. 56, 58, 59, 63, of the Constantinopolitan and Syrian text.211 A hundred years after his death his successors ventured, in their own name, not only to exhort, but to excommunicate whole churches for trifling differences.

The interval between Clement and Paul, and the transition from the apostolic to the apocryphal, from faith to superstition, appears in the indiscriminate use of the Jewish Apocrypha, and in the difference between Paul’s treatment of scepticism in regard to the resurrection, and his disciple’s treatment of the same subject.^12121212    Clement, Ad Cor. c. 25. Contrast with this account the fifteenth chapter of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.212 Clement points not only to the types in nature, the changes of the seasons and of day and night, but also in full earnest to the heathen myth of the miraculous bird, the phoenix in Arabia, which regenerates itself every five hundred years. When the phoenix—so runs the fable—approaches death, it makes itself a nest of frankincense, myrrh, and other spices; from its decaying flesh a winged worm arises, which, when it becomes strong, carries the reproductive nest from Arabia to Heliopolis in Egypt, and there flying down by day, in the sight of all, it lays it, with the bones of its predecessors, upon the altar of the sun. And this takes place, according to the reckoning of the priests, every five hundred years. After Clement other fathers also used the phoenix as a symbol of the resurrection.^12131213    Tertullian )De Resurrect. 13), Origen (C. Cels. IV. 72), Ambrose (Hexaëm. V. 23, 79), Epiphanius, Rufinus, and other patristic writers. The Phoenix was a favorite symbol of renovation and resurrection, and even of Christ himself, among the early Christians, and appears frequently on coins, medals, rings, cups, and tombstones. But in this point they were no more superstitious than the most intelligent heathen contemporaries. Herodotus heard the marvelous story of the burial of the parent bird by the offspring from Egyptian priests, II. 73. Ovid and other Latin poets refer to it, and Claudian devotes a poem to it. Tacitus (Ann. VI. 28), Pliny ) H. Nat. X. 2), and Dion Cassius LVIII. 27) record that the Phoenix actually reappeared in Egypt, a.d. 34, after In interval of 250 years. According to Pliny the bird was also brought to Rome by a decree of Claudius, and exhibited in the comitium, in the year of the city 800 (A. D. 47). This, of course, was a fraud, but many, and among them probably Clement, who may have seen the wonderful bird from Egypt at the time, took it for genuine. But an inspired writer like Paul would never have made use of such a heathen fable as an argument for a Christian truth. "It is now known," says Lightfoot."that the story owes its origin to the symbolic and pictorial representations of astronomy. The appearance of the phoenix is the recurrence of a period marked by the heliacal rising of some prominent star or constellation." See on the whole subject Henrichsen, De Phoenicis Fabula (Havn. 1825), Cowper, Gebhardt and Harnack, Funk, and Lightfoot on ch. 25 of the Clementine Ep., Piper, Mythologie und Symbolik der christl. Kunst (1847) I. 446 sqq., and Lepsius, Chronologie der Aegypter (1849) 180 sq.213

IV. As to the time of its composition, this epistle falls certainly after the death of Peter and Paul, for it celebrates their martyrdom; and probably after the death of John (about 98); for one would suppose, that if he had been living, Clement would have alluded to him, in deference to superior authority, and that the Corinthian Christians would have applied to an apostle for counsel, rather than to a disciple of the apostles in distant Rome. The persecution alluded to in the beginning of the epistle refers to the Domitian as well as the Neronian; for he speaks of "sudden and repeated calamities and reverses which have befallen us."^12141214    Ch. 1. The usual reading is: γενομένας, which refers to past calamities. So Cod. C. The Alex. MS. is here defective, probably [γενομ]ένας .Lightfoot reads with the Syrian version γινομένας, " which are befalling us" (267 and 399), and refers the passage to the continued perils of the church under Domitian.214 He prudently abstains from naming the imperial persecutors, and intercedes at the close for the civil rulers. Moreover, he calls the church at Corinth at that time "firmly established and ancient."^12151215    βεβαιοτάτην καὶ ἀρχαίαν, c. 47.215 With this date the report of Eusebius agrees, that Clement did not take the bishop’s chair in Rome till 92 or 93.^12161216    The later date (93-97) is assIgned to the Epistle by Cotelier, Tillemont, Lardner, Möhler, Schliemann, Bunsen, Ritschl, Lipsius, Hilgenfeld, Donaldson, Bryennios, Harnack, Uhlhorn, Lightfoot (who puts the letter soon after the martyrdom of Flavius Clement, a.d. 95), Funk (who puts it after the death of Domitian, 96). But other writers, including Hugo Grotius, Grabe, Hefele, Wieseler, B. H. Cowper, assIgn the Epistle to an earlier date, and infer from ch. 41 that it must have been written before 70, when the temple service in Jerusalem was still celebrated. "Not everywhere, brethren," says Clement, "are the daily sacrifices offered (προσφέρονται θυσίαι), or the vows, or the sin-offerings, or the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only; and even there they are not offered προσφέρεται) in every place, but only at the altar before the sanctuary, after the victim to be offered has been examined by the high-priest and the ministers already mentioned." This argument is very plausible, but not conclusive, since Josephus wrote a.d. 93 in a similar way of the sacrifices of the temple, using the praesens historicum, as if it still existed, Ant. III. 10. In ch. 6 Clement seems to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem when he says that "jealousy and strife have overthrown great cities and uprooted great nations." Cowper (l.c. p. 16) mentions the absence of any allusion to the Gospel of John as another argument. But the Synoptic Gospels are not named either, although the influence of all the Gospels and nearly all the Epistles can be clearly traced in Clement.216