1 Clement & the Gospel of Matthew?

[Ben C. Smith]

While I am not opposed to the idea of a compound letter by any means, I think that "amen" can be used to close out a miniature doxology.

Fair enough. It does seem to go on forever though.

It really does!!

[John2]

Ben wrote:

If 1 Clement were a law code, I would get your point. But it is not; it is an exhortation (in this section, anyway), and, if it postdates 70, it is exhorting its readers to follow the example of priests who are no longer physically even able to set an example.

I'm still thinking it is possible to follow the example of priests from the OT. Judaism does this today without a Temple by correlating home rituals with the priestly service. But since it's only my hunch, I'm curious to see (and I would need your help with the Greek) how Josephus writes about sacrifices after 70 CE. In Against Apion 2.6 and 2.8 (which, as Wikipedia notes, "cites Josephus' earlier work Antiquities of the Jews, so can be dated after C.E. 94) he writes:

Yet hath our legislator no where forbidden us to pay honors to worthy men, provided they be of another kind, and inferior to those we pay to God; with which honors we willingly testify our respect to our emperors, and to the people of Rome; we also offer perpetual sacrifices for them; nor do we only offer them every day at the common expenses of all the Jews, but although we offer no other such sacrifices out of our common expenses, no, not for our own children, yet do we this as a peculiar honor to the emperors, and to them alone, while we do the same to no other person whomsoever. And let this suffice for an answer in general to Apion, as to what he says with relation to the Alexandrian Jews.

Now there is so great caution used about these offices of religion, that the priests are appointed to go into the temple but at certain hours; for in the morning, at the opening of the inner temple, those that are to officiate receive the sacrifices, as they do again at noon, till the doors are shut. Lastly, it is not so much as lawful to carry any vessel into the holy house; nor is there any thing therein, but the altar [of incense], the table [of shew-bread], the censer, and the candlestick, which are all written in the law; for there is nothing further there, nor are there any mysteries performed that may not be spoken of; nor is there any feasting within the place. For what I have now said is publicly known, and supported by the testimony of the whole people, and their operations are very manifest; for although there be four courses of the priests, and every one of them have above five thousand men in them, yet do they officiate on certain days only; and when those days are over, other priests succeed in the performance of their sacrifices, and assemble together at mid-day, and receive the keys of the temple, and the vessels by tale, without any thing relating to food or drink being carried into the temple; nay, we are not allowed to offer such things at the altar, excepting what is prepared for the sacrifices.

Is all this likewise in the present tense?

[Ben C. Smith]

Ben wrote:

If 1 Clement were a law code, I would get your point. But it is not; it is an exhortation (in this section, anyway), and, if it postdates 70, it is exhorting its readers to follow the example of priests who are no longer physically even able to set an example.

I'm still thinking it is possible to follow the example of priests from the OT. Judaism does this today without a Temple by correlating home rituals with the priestly service. But since it's only my hunch, I'm curious to see (and I would need your help with the Greek) how Josephus writes about sacrifices after 70 CE. In Against Apion 2.6 and 2.8 (which, as Wikipedia notes, "cites Josephus' earlier work Antiquities of the Jews, so can be dated after C.E. 94) he writes:

Yet hath our legislator no where forbidden us to pay honors to worthy men, provided they be of another kind, and inferior to those we pay to God; with which honors we willingly testify our respect to our emperors, and to the people of Rome; we also offer perpetual sacrifices for them; nor do we only offer them every day at the common expenses of all the Jews, but although we offer no other such sacrifices out of our common expenses, no, not for our own children, yet do we this as a peculiar honor to the emperors, and to them alone, while we do the same to no other person whomsoever. And let this suffice for an answer in general to Apion, as to what he says with relation to the Alexandrian Jews.

Now there is so great caution used about these offices of religion, that the priests are appointed to go into the temple but at certain hours; for in the morning, at the opening of the inner temple, those that are to officiate receive the sacrifices, as they do again at noon, till the doors are shut. Lastly, it is not so much as lawful to carry any vessel into the holy house; nor is there any thing therein, but the altar [of incense], the table [of shew-bread], the censer, and the candlestick, which are all written in the law; for there is nothing further there, nor are there any mysteries performed that may not be spoken of; nor is there any feasting within the place. For what I have now said is publicly known, and supported by the testimony of the whole people, and their operations are very manifest; for although there be four courses of the priests, and every one of them have above five thousand men in them, yet do they officiate on certain days only; and when those days are over, other priests succeed in the performance of their sacrifices, and assemble together at mid-day, and receive the keys of the temple, and the vessels by tale, without any thing relating to food or drink being carried into the temple; nay, we are not allowed to offer such things at the altar, excepting what is prepared for the sacrifices.

Is all this likewise in the present tense?

Yes, I believe so. And I agree that there is such a thing as an "historical present," as it were. In Josephus this present makes sense to me, since he is debating Apion, who wrote before 70 about the temple rites, and is thus using Jewish practice from before 70 to counter Apion's points. As for Clement, however, an historical present makes less sense; that link from Jax makes this point pretty well, I think, though the author blanks out when trying to guess why the Mishnah uses the present tense of the temple rites: law codes usually do use the present tense, even of practices which have been abandoned. And I have already pointed out how the cessation of the rites undermines Clement's point, whereas for Josephus (who has earlier in the work already alluded to the siege under Vespasian and thus situated himself in time) there is no such undermining at all, since Apion's points presume a working temple cultus and are, therefore, best countered by presuming the same.

[John2]

... why the Mishnah uses the present tense of the temple rites ...

The Mishnah was my next stop, but I will take what you said about it into consideration (and I also need to catch up on what else you and Jax have posted and will take a look at Jax's link now).

[John2]

Ha! And Herron beat me to Josephus. Much to chew on here.

[John2]

Geez, Herron covers all the bases (Josephus, the Mishnah, the question of sacrifices post-70 CE). I could have used him earlier. But … I'm still inclined to think that 1 Clement is using the priestly instructions in the OT as an example. But as Herron notes, when he elsewhere uses the OT he uses the past tense. But Herron goes on to write:

When he speaks of order, though, he is appealing to enduring and perennially valid examples of order … Applying this to his reference to the Temple, one would have to admit that if the Temple, once quite an ordered affair, now lay in ruins, 1 Clement would have been better advised not even to mention the Temple in the first place.

But, as Herron says earlier, "1 Clement's [other] examples from the Old Testament are people, who must necessarily some day die." But they serve as examples of order for 1 Clement, right, even though they only exist in the OT? So why couldn't the priestly service likewise serve as an example of order even if it only existed in the OT? It's at least supposed to be enduring, unlike the OT people he mentions. Is it that darn present tense again? But why can't Clement be like Josephus and the MIshnah in this respect? What makes Clement so different from them? Why can't what Herron says about the Mishnah apply to Clement, i.e., that "perhaps [the use of the historical present tense the Mishnah] … was a pious manner in which the Temple's actual destruction, such a painful fact to the Jewish faithful, need not be directly admitted" (particularly if 1 Clement was written by Flavius Clemens, as I suspect, who was put to death for "drifting into Jewish ways")?

I admit I'm still trying to fully grok what you and Herron are saying regarding the present tense though and will need to think about it some more.

[John2]

Hm. I'm not buying Herron's argument that what was good for Josephus and the Mishnah regarding the use of the present tense is not good for 1 Clement, at least regarding "One simply cannot say that of 1 Clement: we do not know that 1 Clement knows the Temple is in ruins!"

Alright, we don't "know" that 1 Clement is aware that "the Temple is in ruins," but for the various reasons I've given I suspect that it was written c. 95 CE (or at least after Paul and before Hegesippus), so I at least feel comfortable with the idea that 1 Clement knows that "the Temple is in ruins" like Josephus and the Mishnah.

And in the big picture it looks like I'm with Lightfoot on this (to judge from Herron's takedown, but I want to see what more I can find about him on this), but I'm not in a position to say (based on the grammar) if I can agree with Herron that Lightfoot's argument is weak.

On the question of whether there were sacrifices on the Temple Mount after 70 CE, you make a good point that 1 Clement does say the altar was in front of the sanctuary and I need to give that more thought. But perhaps it was there in a "crumbled state" as per Clark (which Herron doesn't buy). And Herron makes a good point that the skeletons that were found by the Temple Mount would have rendered the area unclean and would have compelled Jews to bury them and that they didn't indicates that they thus didn't offer sacrifices.

But if the bodies were in caves and a drain under a house, would post-70 CE Jews have been aware that they were there (particularly if everything was in a "crumbled state")? And I don't know if it is the same thing Herron (via Kenyon) is referring to (it seems more recent), but there appears to be some question about the dating and identity of a mass grave of skeletons found near the Temple Mount, e,g,:

Senior archaeologists approached by Israel HaYom with photographs of the skeletons said that they were not enough to determine the history of the cave. Samples need to be taken from the site and dated, they said, before deciding that the mass grave holds Jews and not Muslims.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/158417

Maybe the same applies to other skeletons. But I need to look into this issue more.


And where have I read that the Temple Mount is sanctified for all time, Temple of no Temple? Perhaps that could be a factor in the question of whether sacrifices were made there post-70 CE.

[John2]

Ah, yes, M. Eduyot 8:6:

Rabbi Eliezer said: I have heard that when they were building the Temple [complex] they made curtains for the Temple and curtains for the Temple-courts; but in the case of the Temple they built from the outside, and in the case of the Temple-court they built from the inside. Rabbi Joshua said: I have heard that sacrifices may be offered even though there is no Temple, and that the most holy sacrifices may be eaten even though there are no curtains, and the less holy sacrifices and second tithes even though there is no wall [around Jerusalem]; because the first sanctification sanctified both for its own time and for the time to come.

https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Eduyot. ... l&lang2=en

[John2]

I have limited time so perhaps I've missed it, but I have a question. Does the interpolation idea create more problems than the non-interpolation idea? Why would someone interpolate that passage into a work that otherwise post-dates Paul and refers to the Corinthian church as "ancient"?

[Jax]

Hm. I'm not buying Herron's argument that what was good for Josephus and the Mishnah regarding the use of the present tense is not good for 1 Clement, at least regarding "One simply cannot say that of 1 Clement: we do not know that 1 Clement knows the Temple is in ruins!"

Alright, we don't "know" that 1 Clement is aware that "the Temple is in ruins," but for the various reasons I've given I suspect that it was written c. 95 CE (or at least after Paul and before Hegesippus), so I at least feel comfortable with the idea that 1 Clement knows that "the Temple is in ruins" like Josephus and the Mishnah.

And in the big picture it looks like I'm with Lightfoot on this (to judge from Herron's takedown, but I want to see what more I can find about him on this), but I'm not in a position to say (based on the grammar) if I can agree with Herron that Lightfoot's argument is weak.

On the question of whether there were sacrifices on the Temple Mount after 70 CE, you make a good point that 1 Clement does say the altar was in front of the sanctuary and I need to give that more thought. But perhaps it was there in a "crumbled state" as per Clark (which Herron doesn't buy). And Herron makes a good point that the skeletons that were found by the Temple Mount would have rendered the area unclean and would have compelled Jews to bury them and that they didn't indicates that they thus didn't offer sacrifices.

But if the bodies were in caves and a drain under a house, would post-70 CE Jews have been aware that they were there (particularly if everything was in a "crumbled state")? And I don't know if it is the same thing Herron (via Kenyon) is referring to (it seems more recent), but there appears to be some question about the dating and identity of a mass grave of skeletons found near the Temple Mount, e,g,:

Senior archaeologists approached by Israel HaYom with photographs of the skeletons said that they were not enough to determine the history of the cave. Samples need to be taken from the site and dated, they said, before deciding that the mass grave holds Jews and not Muslims.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/158417

Maybe the same applies to other skeletons. But I need to look into this issue more.


And where have I read that the Temple Mount is sanctified for all time, Temple of no Temple? Perhaps that could be a factor in the question of whether sacrifices were made there post-70 CE.

But there is still the problem that the Temple part of the letter is probably not part of the original letter of 1 Clement. That part of the letter is clearly Jewish and Clement of Rome would have been Roman not Jewish.