Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Lightfoot says not Clement of Rome https://books.google.com/books?id=uoRPA ... 22&f=false

The thread here about letters of Clement may be relevant. Note my mention of a reference to an otherwise unknown collection of letters of Clement of Rome by John of Scythopolis

On the issue of confusion between Clement of Rome and Clement of Alexandria; the probably inauthentic work On Providence attributed to Clement of Alexandria by Maximus the Confessor is attributed to the apostolic teacher Clement by Anastasius Sinaita. Apostolic teacher seems more like Clement of Rome than Clement of Alexandria. See here

Andrew Criddle

99% of your posts are excellent. This not so much. Deflection.

Holl notes that people were being called by this title in the later period too:

ὁ θεῖος Διονύσιος ὁ ̓Αρεοπα γίτης , ἀποστολικὸς διδάσκαλος Γρηγόριος , ὁ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας ἄσβεστος φωστὴρ Κύριλλος , ὁ θεοφόρος ἡμῶν διδάσκαλος ὁ Νύσης

I'm going to spend some more time on this later, SA. You know how much I care about getting things right, being thorough and cautious while doing so. No excuses and second guessing myself more than anyone.

In the meantime...

Keep posting!

Anything you can do to be specific about the evidence, or to try to explain the relevant arguments, is helpful.

It is entirely possible that I am wrong here. But I will try and explain why I am dubious about the (late) claims of letters attributed to Clement of Alexandria.

1/ Early writers (e.g. Eusebius) seem not to know of such letters.
2/ There is a general tendency to expand the 1 (or possibly 2) genuine letters of Clement of Rome with pseudonymous letters attributed to this early figure.
3/ Late writers claim access to a collection of letters by Clement of Alexandria'
4/ However all such claims seem later than this passage in Pseudo-Dionysius

And whereas the philosopher Clement maintains that the title “Exemplar” may, in a sense, be applied to the more important types in the visible world, he employs not the terms of his discourse in their proper, perfect and simple meaning. But even if we grant the truth of his contention, we must remember the Scripture which saith: “I did not show these things unto thee that thou mightest follow after them,” but that through such knowledge of these as is suited to our faculties we may be led up (so far as is possible) to the Universal Cause.

This Clement is identified by John of Scythopolis, the very early commentator on Dionysius, with Clement of Rome, some later writers have identified him as the Clement mentioned in Paul's epistle to the Philippians. If one accepts Dionysius as a convert of Paul then the Clement involved must be a 1st century figure. However this sort of technical philosophical definition is entirely implausible from Clement of Rome, it is not paralleled in the clearly authentic works of Clement of Alexandria but seems related to the list of definitions cited from the work On Providence dubiously attributed to Clement of Alexandria. See here.
5/ Hence Pseudo-Dionysius either inherits or creates a confusion between Clement of Rome and Clement of Alexandria.
6/ As I posted earlier John of Scythopolis, the very early commentator on Dionysius, seems to refer to an otherwise unknown collection of letters by Clement of Rome.
7/ this IMO provides a plausible explanation for why later writers influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius and knowing of a collection of letters attributed to Clement might claim to know a collection of letters by Clement of Alexandria of which earlier writers are ignorant.

Andrew Criddle

To make my point more simply.

IF Byzantine monastic circles mention a large collection of letters attributed rightly or wrongly to Clement of Rome
AND there is some confusion in those circles between Clement of Alexandria and Clement of Rome
THEN it may be unnecessary to understand the references to a collection of letters attributed to Clement of Alexandria as implying two separate letter collections one attributed rightly or wrongly to Clement of Rome and the other attributed rightly or wrongly to Clement of Alexandria.

Although I have tried to give evidence for the premises they can certainly be questioned. However, if you accept the premises then IMO the conclusion follows.

Andrew Criddle

Fwiw,
"John [of Scythopolis] seems to have a special penchant for pre-Nicene authors: Africanus, Aristo of Pella, Clement of Alexandria, Hermas, Hippolytus, Irenaeus, Justin, Methodius of Olympus, Origen, Papias, Polycarp, Symmachus, and the Apostolic Constitutions."

I am interested in the likelihood that Aristo of Pella was identical with the Aristion that Papias mentioned.

Quote from p. 57 of Paul Rorem and John C. Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis and the Dionysian Corpus: Annotating the Aeropagite (OUP, 1998).

IF Byzantine monastic circles mention a large collection of letters attributed rightly or wrongly to Clement of Rome
AND there is some confusion in those circles between Clement of Alexandria and Clement of Rome

I've spent some time going through manuscripts of Sacra Parallela. Holl's assessments seem accurate. There is no reason why he'd be biased in favor of To Theodore half a century before it was discovered. But I noticed there many more identifications of Clement of Alexandria as Clement of Rome than the other way around.