From Stalemate to Deadlock: Clement's Letter to Theodore in Recent Scholarship (original) (raw)
Related papers
Behind the Seven Veils, II: Assessing Clement of Alexandria's Knowledge of the Mystic Gospel of Mark
Tony Burke, ed., Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha, 2017
We first learned of a letter of Clement of Alexandria “to Theodore” and of the “mystic” Gospel of Mark that it quotes in 1958, when Morton Smith catalogued a manuscript (Mar Saba 65) that constitutes the only extant evidence for both these works. The lack of external corroboration for this gospel has made the spectre of forgery particularly hard to dispel. Fortunately, indirect evidence bearing on Clement’s knowledge of this gospel exists but has been mostly overlooked. Given the letter’s premise that the gospel pericope which it quotes has a “true interpretation” of a mystical (i.e., allegorical) nature, we might expect that aspects of this interpretation would appear in Clement’s undisputed writings in the various places where he expounds equivalent phrases (e.g., “for he had many possessions” in Mark 10:22; “the mystery of the kingdom of God” in Mark 4:11) and themes (e.g., Jesus raising a person from the dead, a period of seven days, wearing a single linen garment) in other texts. The present paper asks, what would happen if we apply those allegorical expositions of other texts to the mystic gospel’s story about Jesus and the young man? Certainly if the letter isn’t by Clement, and he did not actually know this gospel story, we wouldn’t expect these scattered expositions to make much sense when brought together, and we most certainly wouldn’t expect them to combine into a consistent allegorical interpretation that could constitute the “true interpretation” promised at the point where the letter breaks off. Yet that is precisely what happens. The conspicuous parallels in Clement’s expositions of other texts all concern aspects of his path to perfection through the church, and they combine in their proper order and with remarkable detail to represent Jesus leading the young man through this entire progression. Hence we can conclude that he indeed knew this gospel and wrote this letter.
The Seventh Book of the Stromateis. Proceedings of the Colloquium on Clement of Alexandria (Olomouc, October 21-23, 2010)
Clement's Exegetical Interests in Stromateis VIII
Clement's Biblical Exegesis. Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on Clement of Alexandria (Olomouc, May 29–31, 2014), ed. Veronika Černušková, Judith L. Kovacs, and Jana Plátová (Vigiliae Christianae Supplements 139; Leiden / Boston: Brill, 2016), pp. 162-178
One of four preparatory studies for my PhA monograph on the ''eighth Stromateus'. Published in a fine collection of essays on early Patristic biblical exegesis. Abstract: In the first two pages of the so-called eighth book of the Stromateis, Clement outlines a method of inquiry suitable to the followers of the “really true philosophy”, i.e., the Christians. He does so in response to the biblical command “Seek and you will find, knock and it will open, ask and it will be given to you” (Matt 7:7). A close reading of these pages shows that Clement thinks of Christian inquiry as a process in the course of which the meaning of difficult scriptural passages is revealed on the basis of Scripture itself. He also thinks of it as a process of teaching, accompanied by the critical examination of various (other than biblical) views in light of the “common notions”. How does this outline fit in with the remaining sections of the ‘eighth book’, consisting, for the most part, of purely philosophical material whose relevance to anything Christian is far from plain? Analysing the contents of the first ‘chapter’ and other (rare) occasions in the remaining sections of the text where traces of Clement’s Christian interests are discernible, this paper argues that, when composing the text known as Stromateis VIII, Clement approached his source-material from the perspective of a biblical exegete and a Christian teacher. Nevertheless, he did not deem it his duty to subordinate the material to this perspective, leaving it open to further exploitation and limiting himself to occasional comments and glosses.
2019
A standard approach in historically minded disciplines to documents and other artefacts that have become suspect is to concentrate on their dissimilarities with known genuine artefacts. While such an approach works reasonably well with relatively poor forgeries, more skilfully done counterfeits have tended to divide expert opinions, demanding protracted scholarly attention. As there has not been a widespread scholarly consensus on a constrained set of criteria for detecting forgeries, a pragmatic maximum for such dissimilarities—as there are potentially an infinite numbers of differences that can be enumerated between any two artefacts—has been impossible to set. Thus, rather than relying on a philosophically robust critical framework, scholars have been accustomed to approaching the matter on a largely case-by-case basis, with a handful of loosely formulated rules for guidance. In response to these shortcomings, this dissertation argues that a key characteristic of inquiry in historically minded disciplines should be the ability to distinguish between knowledge-claims that are epistemically warranted—i.e., that can be asserted post hoc from the material reality they have become embedded in with reference to some sort of rigorous methodological framework—and knowledge-claims that are not. An ancient letter by Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–215 CE) to Theodore, in which two passages from the Longer Gospel of Mark (also known as the Secret Gospel of Mark) are quoted, has long been suspected of having been forged by Morton Smith (1915–1991), its putative discoverer. The bulk of this dissertation consists of four different articles that each use different methodological approaches. The first, a discourse analysis on scholarly debate over the letter’s authenticity, illuminates the reasons behind its odd character and troubled history. Second, archival research unearths how data points have become corrupted through unintended additions in digital-image processing (a phenomenon labelled line screen distortion here). Third, a quantitative study of the handwriting in Clement’s Letter to Theodore shows the inadequacy of unwittingly applying palaeographic standards in cases of suspected deceptions compared to the standards adhered to in forensic studies. Additionally, Smith’s conduct as an academic manuscript hunter is found to have been consistent with the standard practices of that profession. Finally, a study of the conceptual distinctions and framing of historical explanations in contemporary forgery discourse reveals the power of the methodologic approach of WWFD (What Would a Forger Do?), which has recently been used in three varieties (unconcealed, concealed, and hyperactive) to construe suspected documents as potential forgeries—despite its disregard of justificatory grounding in favour of coming up with free-form, first-person narratives in which the conceivable functions as its own justification. Together, the four articles illustrate the pitfalls of scholarly discourse on forgeries, especially that surrounding Clement’s Letter to Theodore. The solution to the poor argumentation that has characterized the scholarly study of forgeries is suggested to be an exercise in demarcation: to decide (in the abstract) which features should be acceptable as evidence either for or against the ascription of the status of forgery to an historical artefact. Implied within this suggestion is the notion of constraint, i.e., such that a constrained criterion would be one that cannot be employed to back up both an argument and its counter-argument. A topical case study—a first step on the road to creating a rigorous standard for constrained criteria in determining counterfeits—is the alternative narrative of an imagined creation of Clement’s Letter to Theodore by Smith around the time of its reported discovery (1958). Concealed indicators of authority, or the deliberate concealment of authorial details within the forged artefact by the forger, is established as a staple of the literary strategy of mystification, and their post hoc construction as acceptable evidence of authorship is argued to follow according to criteria: 1) that the beginning of the act of decipherment of a concealed indicator of authority has to have been preceded by a literary primer that is unambiguous to a high degree, 2) that, following the prompting of the literary primer, the act of deciphering a concealed indicator of authority has to have adhered to a technique or method that is unambiguous to a high degree, and 3) that, following the prompting of the literary primer and the act of decipherment, both of which must have been practiced in an unambiguous manner to a high degree, the plain-text solution to the concealed indicator of authority must likewise be unambiguous to a high degree.
2010
"Clement of Alexandria (c.150–215 CE) is one of the most significant theologians of the second-century, and his work is still the subject of intense academic debate. This book provides a new perspective on Clement’s thought, through a critical examination of the work of one of his critics, Photios (c.820–893 CE). Photios, the Patriarch of Constantinople, based his critique on Clement’s (now lost) treatise ‘Hypotyposeis’, claiming the work contained eight ‘heresies’. The book examines each ‘error’ listed in the 109th codex of Photios’ ‘Bibliotheca’ in depth, using evidence from Clement’s existing work to consider the likely accuracy of Photios’ critique. Focusing on these eight ‘heresies’ offers a unique opportunity to illuminate what in terms of post-Nicene orthodoxy are Clement’s most problematic opinions, setting them in the context of their original philosophical and theological frame "