I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Secret Alias
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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So the triangular numbers are 1, 3, 6, 10 etc but n = 1, 2, 3, 4. The ideas haven't really coalesced in my head to be honest. But clearly the 'tetrad' = 4 but the triangular number is really 10, I think. Similarly the dyad is 3. I think there is somewhere in Celsus too where the masculine triad is mentioned Have to re-visit. But I am starting to see - possibly - a problem with Irenaeus's formulation about the gospel 'having to be' four. This is all very confusing to be honest. Not clear cut. But he may (or must) have argued that as the ten goes back to 4 there was some 'harmony' between the old and new testaments. But the 4 is a feminine number and the gospel is 'of the Son' or of the Lord. Seems to breakdown - at least here.
Last edited by Secret Alias on Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Secret Alias wrote: Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:34 am So the triangular numbers are 1, 3, 6, 10 etc but n = 1, 2, 3, 4
Check.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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The 153 fish in John - another triangular number.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Secret Alias wrote: Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:40 am The 153 fish in John - another triangular number.
Yes. There seems to be something vaguely Pythagorean going on in John 21. The Pythagoreans liked triangular numbers; and there is this:

Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 8: 8 At that time also, when he was journeying from Sybaris to Crotona, he met near the shore with some fishermen, who weie theh drawing their nets heavily laden with fishes from the deep. and told them he knew the exact number of the fish they had caught. But the fishermen promising they would perform whatever he should order them to do, if the event corresponded with his prediction, he ordered them, after they had accurately numbered the fish, to return them alive to the sea: and what is yet more wonderful, not one of the fish died while he stood on the shore, though they had been detained from the water a considerable time. Having therefore paid the fishermen the price of their fish, he departed for Crotona. But they every where divulged the fact, and having learnt his name from some children, they told it to all men. Hence those that heard of this affair were desirous of seeing the stranger, and what they desired was easily obtained. But they were astonished on surveying his countenance, and conjectured him to be such a man as he was in reality.

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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Not to go all conspiratorial here, but 153 is the triangle of 17. The word σημεῖον ("sign") appears 17 times in the eclectic text of the gospel of John; and the textual variants must not matter very much, since that word appears 17 times in the Byzantine text of the gospel of John, as well.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Yes it seems - to me at least - as if you look at the Alexandrian tradition that it oddly becomes more Platonic the further back you go. Clement being the most ecstatically Platonic and that this enthusiasm was likely justified by Philo's' writings to define 'Judaism' as something proto-Platonic. Origen (or perhaps Eusebius's editing of Origen) breaks from this enthusiasm. But it is hard to explain the traces of Platonism in the gospel and something odd about Irenaeus's justification of the number 4 for the gospels by means of these 'Platonic' or 'Pythagorean' arguments. I wonder whether Christianity or one sort of Christianity developed from some sort of Jewish Platonist society.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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I just want to say how lucky we are to have Ben at this forum. From an email I sent out yesterday:

Dear Stephan,

Thanks for your intriguing email, and congrats on your VC article, which I admit I’ve not yet read. Also, I’m not a professor, just a simple scholar-cum-editor.

The grammatical structuring of the passage you’ve quoted suggests, I agree, some kind of geometrically diagrammable association. Have you checked the app. crit. in the relevant SC volume? When I second-guessed the edition of Stromateis VI, it was on the basis of the manuscript variations the editor had thankfully included at the bottom of the page. I ask, because something looks a bit fishy in the main text, and when I read it without the parentheses (modern insertions) I wonder if there are other ways the passage could be rendered. I can see why the ANF translator took the ὑστάτῳ as pointing to the Hebrew and why you argue for a sixth person (the reading I prefer). Also, what is the force of πρῶτος? The most eminent one? Or should we be thinking of the Ionian again? And one further grammatical point – in all the times I recall Clement using μέν, it is with a single δέ. Are there any other cases in his corpus of a triplet μέν…δέ…δέ construction? Finding a parallel would go a long way to making your first case, which on the face of it seems plausible to me.

The ANF translation is muddled and wrong here, I agree. I just hate that “first in power” for the Aristotelian-like δυνάμει.

A problem in establishing this is how much extra mileage to give it. If you’ve read the Theologoumena Arithmetikes, you know that a symbolic number could be interpreted in many directions, and it was incumbent upon an author to steer his readers one way or another. Which way is Clement sending us? Maybe there’s a clue in the passage just after the one you quoted, where Clement ties these luminaries to four Apostles, arranged via a pair of τε…καί’s like a square. I think Clement might be trying to associate each of his teachers with a specific apostle, and creating a lineage of succession.

I don’t see Clement taking us further into triangular numbers, at least not here. I know he’s quite capable of it, but he normally leaves us some textual clues to send us in the direction he intends (lest we wander into the universe of Babylon 5). The first puzzle he lays for us is to figure out how to correlate the triangular number six with the square four. I’ll have to mull on that one. Let me know if you come up with anything.

Good luck with your research in this area. Maybe you or your friend will be inspired to do a fresh English translation of the Stromateis.

Best wishes,
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Secret Alias wrote: Tue Apr 10, 2018 12:03 pmI just want to say how lucky we are to have Ben at this forum.
Thank you. Glad to see my reading deserves serious consideration, at any rate. As I said, I am not 100% certain of it, and I can relate to what this fellow says about something being funny about the text, like maybe it is not quite what Clement wrote: it is pretty convoluted, hard to follow.
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Ephesus was in Ionia. Irenaeus seems to refer to an apostolic gospel being published there:
Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.[AH 3.1.1]
There are a number of lists which place John first. I wonder again if Clement is referencing gospels. Another possibility is Poiycarp who was 'of Smyrna' which is also in Ionia.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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Re: I Don't Get the Ordinal Grouping of Powers in Clement of Alexandria's Statement

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Also to follow up on my friend's suggestion:
Well, they preserving the tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul, the sons receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), came by God's will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds.
Aren't these the pillars of the Church? This would imply some link with the long discussion of shapes and mathematics associated with the temple in Book 6 potentially.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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