No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
In the second century, Christians vied with each other to produce an authoritative discourse on Christian identity. Some early Christians deployed historically- and culturally-specific notions of procreation and kinship in their struggles with each other over claims to represent the truth of Christian biblical interpretation, practices, and doctrine. The extant writings of the late second-century Christian author Clement of Alexandria offer a generous range of contexts for exploring the nuances of this practice. This study comprises one facet of a larger investigation into early Christian use of procreative and kinship imagery in discourses about Christian identity in the second century CE.
1 As Averil Cameron has rightly noted, “the second century, in particular, was a battleground for the struggle of Christians to control their own discourse and define their faith” (Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991] 21)Google Scholar . While Cameron has looked especially at how various Christians competed to define Christianity in relation to non-Christians, I shall focus on strategies that early Christians developed in their competition with each other for self-definition.
2 See Buell, Denise Kimber, “Procreative Language in Clement of Alexandria” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1995).Google Scholar
3 Mary Jo Maynes, Ann Waltner, Birgitte Soland, and Ulrike Strasser, “Introduction: Toward a Comparative History of Gender, Kinship and Power,” in idem , eds., Kinship, Gender, Power: A Comparative and Interdisciplinary History (New York: Routledge, 1996) 4Google Scholar.
4 See Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney, “Naturalizing Power,” in idem , Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis (New York: Routledge, 1995) 1Google Scholar ; and Delaney, Carol, “Father State, Motherland, and the Birth of Modern Turkey,” in Yanagisako and Delaney, Naturalizing Power, 177–99Google Scholar.
5 Coxe, A. Cleveland, “Introductory note to Gregory Thaumaturgus,” in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 6: Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius the Great, Julius Africanus, Anatolius and Minor Writers, Methodius, Arnobius (ed. Roberts, Alexander and Donaldson, James; 1886; reprinted Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) 3Google Scholar (my emphasis). Although Coxe wrote at the end of the nineteenth century, this collection has undergone numerous reprintings (most recently in the 1990s) and continues to be the most widely consulted collection of patristic texts in English translation.
6 For example, despite scholarly rejection of the historiographical validity of theological distinctions such as heresy and orthodoxy, Karen King has shown that scholars continue to define “Gnosticism” metonymically as some “pure” Christianity's historical “other,” if not its inferior ( King, Karen L., “Is There Such a Thing as Gnosticism?” [Paper presented at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, November 1993] esp. 11)Google Scholar.
7 Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 6.13.1-3) lists ten works by Clement, five of which have survived: an eight-part work known as the Stromateis (or Miscellanies); the Protreptikos pros Hellenas (or Exhortation to the Greeks); the three-part work Paidagogos (or the Tutor); a homily on Mark 10:17-31 known as Tis ho sozomenos plousios (Who is the Rich Man that is being Saved?); and a brief discourse entitled Ho protreptikos eis hupomonen e pros tous neosti bebaptismenous (Exhortation to Endurance or To the Recently Baptized). In addition, two of his notebooks and one letter are extant: a notebook of quotations and comments on the teachings of the Valentinian Christian, Theodotos, known as Ek ton Theodotou kai tes Anatolikes kaloumenes didaskalias kata tou Oualentinou chronous epitomai (Excerpts of Theodotos); a notebook of comments on biblical prophetic writings known as Ek ton prophetikon eklogai (Eclogues of the Prophets); and a letter possibly containing a variant for the Gospel of Mark.
Works that Eusebius attributes to Clement of which nothing or only small fragments now exist include: an eight volume scripture commentary known as the Hypotyposeis (Sketches); the treatise Peri tou pascha (On the Pascha); a discourse entitled Peri nesteias (On Fasting); one entitled Peri katalalias (On Slander); and Kanon ekklesiastikos e pros tous loudaizontas (Ecclestiastical Canon or Against the Judaizers) (Eusebius Hist. eccl. 6.13.2-3). In addition, Clement refers to at least two now lost works of his own: Peri anastaseos (On Resurrection) (Paed. 1.47.1) and Peri enkrateias (On Continence) (Paed. 2.94.1). Clement's near contemporaries, Julius Africanus and Alexander of Jerusalem, also mention him in passing.
8 Eusebius Hist. eccl. 6.6.1.
9 Bardy, Gustave, “Aux origines de l'ecole d'Alexandrie,” RechSR 27 (1937) 65–90Google Scholar ; Alain Le Boulleuc, “L'ecole d'Alexandrie. De quelques aventures d'un concept historiographique,” i n ααεεανθþινα : Hellenisme, judaisme et christianisme a Alexandrie: Melanges offerts au P. Claude Mondesert (Paris: Cerf, 1987) 403–17Google Scholar ; Hoek, Annewies van den, “How Alexandrian was Clement of Alexandria? Reflections on Clement and his Alexandrian Background,” HeyJ 31 [1990] 179–82Google Scholar ; idem, “The ‘Catechetical’ School of Early Christian Alexandria and Its Philonic Heritage,” HTR 90:1(1997) 59–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; Dawson, David, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992) 219–22Google Scholar.
10 I agree with David Dawson that this is the appropriate way to characterize Clement's place within , Christianity (Allegorical Readers, 219–22).Google Scholar
11 For example, “[The gnostic Christian] considers every kind of preeminence honorable in proportion to its worth. Among sensible things, rulers and parents and everyone who is older are to be honored; among things taught or learned, the most ancient philosophy and the earliest prophecy; among noetic things, that which is elder in origin, the beginning and firstfruit of all things, himself timeless and without beginning, namely, the son, from whom one learns about the ultimate cause, the father of all, the earliest and most beneficent of all existences.” Strom. 
.
12 Strom. 7.101.4: ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π] ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π]σ
13 That is, his various teachers: “One of these, an Ionian, came from Greece, the remainder from the Greek dispersion; one came from Coele-Syria, one from Egypt, others from the East, one from among the Assyrians, one a Hebrew, from Palestine. I fell in with a final one…I tracked him down to Egypt and stayed with him” (Strom. 1.11.2). The context of Clement's statement (“in direct line from Peter, James, John, and Paul”) strongly suggests that all of these teachers were Christians, not merely the final teacher, generally assumed to have been Pantaenus (So also Osborn, Eric, “Teaching and Writing in the First Chapter of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria,” JTS 10 [1959] 337, 339)Google Scholar . Contrast Clement's self-description with that of Justin Martyr, whose catalogue of past teachers culminates in conversion at the hands of a Christian teacher (Dial. 2).
14 Strom. 1.11.3: 
.
15 Hist. ecct. 6.13.8: ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π].
16 See , Buell, “Procreative Language,” 21–61Google Scholar ; and duBois, Page, Sowing the Body: Psychoanalysis and Ancient Representations of Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) [65–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar , 119-203.
17 The concern for resemblance to one's father instead of one's mother may derive from a number of possible causes. A widespread notion in Clement's day was apparently that the father's contribution of the essential source for a future child in his sperm did not guarantee that the child would be in the father's likeness. The mother, as the purported supplier of the material substance of the child, often received credit for the ability to determine the likeness of the child either through imagination, emotion, or visual imaging. She might cause her child t o resemble someone who is not its father if she loves, thinks about, or looks at someone or something else at the moment of conception. The early second-century CE physician Soranos, for example, writes that “some women, seeing monkeys during intercourse, have born children resembling monkeys. The tyrant of the Cyprians who was misshapen, compelled his wife t o look at beautiful statues during intercourse and became the father of well-shaped children” (Gynaikia, 1.39; ET: Soranus' Gynecology [trans. Temkin, Owsei, et al.; 1956; reprinted Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991] 37–38)Google Scholar . This entire field of discussion may also reveal a fear among men over the uncertainty of determining paternity. For further discussion of ancient notions of heredity, see for example, Lesky, Erna and Waszink, J. H., “Embryologie,” RAC 4 (1959) 1233–38Google Scholar ; Grmek, Mirko D., “Antiikki ja perinndllisyys,” Hippokrates 5 (1988) 42–57Google Scholar (with English abstract); Preus, Anthony, “Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Generation of Animals,” Journal of the History of Biology 3 (1970) 48–50CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed ; and Boylan, Michael, “Galen's Conception Theory,” Journal of the History of Biology 19 (1986) 54–55Google Scholar , 65-69.
18 The opening of the Stromateis contains three examples: “Children are [the offspring] of bodies, while teachings are the offspring of the soul” (ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π]) (Strom. 1.1.2); “we call our religious instructors fathers” (ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π]) (Strom. 1.1.3); and “everyone who is educated in obedience to his educator becomes a son” (εομιμοσ απνλøεν ισ þωμιπμ]/ και απελενøεþοσ) (Strom. 1.2.1). For a discussion of this tradition in the writings of Plato, Philo, Paul, and others, see , Buell, “Procreative Language,” 62–94Google Scholar.
19 Clement of Alexandria, Les Stromates; Book 1, intro. Mondesert, Claude, trans, and notes by Caster, Marcel (SC 30; Paris: Cerf, 1951)Google Scholar 28 (my translation and emphasis).
20 Strom. 1.11.3.
21 Why these four in particular? In an attempt to understand the phenomenon of appealing ot limited groups of apostles and/or disciples within a diverse range of early Christian literature, Douglas M. Parrott proposes to chart a distinction between those apostles or disciples primarily claimed by “Gnostics” (for example, Thomas or Mary Magdalene) and those by the “orthodox” (such as Peter) (“Gnostic and Orthodox Disciples in the Second and Third Centuries,” in Hedrick, Charles W. and Hodgson, Robert Jr, eds., Nag Hammadl, Gnosticism, and Early Christianity [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986] 213–17)Google Scholar . Two weaknesses of Parrot's intriguing hypothesis, however, are his assumption of an orthodoxy/heresy split for this time period, and the fact of the authoritative appeal of certain apostolic figures (such as Paul) across diverse Christian perspectives.
22 Hoek, Annewies van den, “Techniques of Quotation in Clement of Alexandria: A View of Ancient Literary Working Methods,” VC 50 (1996) 223–43.Google Scholar
25 Strom. 1.12.1.
24 As I argue below, Clement recognizes that other groups claim that their interpretive authority comes from a tradition deriving from an apostle or disciple: for example, according to Clement, Valentinians locate themselves within a Pauline tradition (Strom. 7.106.4), whereas the followers of (at least) Basilides trace their teachings to the thirteenth disciple, Matthias (Strom. 7.108.1). See also Pagels, Elaine H., “Visions, Appearances, and Apostolic Authority: Gnostic and Orthodox Traditions,” in Aland, Barbara et al., eds., Gnosis: Festschriftfur Hans Jonas (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1978) 415–30Google Scholar.
25 Strom. 7.108.1: εομιμοσ απνλøεν ισ þωμιπμ]/ και απελενøεþοσ. Of course, this type of assertion appears earlier in Irenaeus's writings (see, for example, Adv. haer. 1.10.2).
26 Prot. 89.2: εομιμοσ απνλøεν ισ þωμιπμ]/ και απελενøεþοσ σισαμκαλειον σισαμκαλια παπασ
Clement imagines that those who have already become Christians might also experience conflicts of allegiance. His homily Who is the Rich Man that is being Saved? depicts this potential conflict of allegiance being arbitrated in an imaginary trial. He frames the trial scene by offering the best outcome first: “If, for instance, a man had a godless father or son or brother, who became a hindrance to his faith and an obstacle to the life above, let him live in fellowship or agreement with him, but let him dissolve the fleshly relationship on account of spiritual antagonism” (Quis div. salv. 22.7). Presenting the fictional human father's views in the form of a direct address, Clement writes, “Imagine your father standing before you saying, 'I sowed you and raised you—follow me, commit injustices with me, and do not obey the law of Christ' and whatever else a blasphemous person who is dead by nature would say” (ibid., 23.1). The earthly father claims parental rights over the child, whereas Christ argues that his claims supersede the earthly father's because he has given the Christian a new birth and is indeed his or her nurse and the one who will reveal God, the good father (ibid., 23.1-4). Clement then places the responsibility of adjudication upon the individual: “When you have listened to these appeals from each side, pass judgment on your own behalf and cast the vote for your own salvation. Even though a brother says the like, or even a child or wife or anyone else, let it be Christ that wins in you above all; for it is on your behalf that he struggles” (ibid., 23.5).
27 Paed. 1.18.4: εομιμοσ απνλøεν ισ þωμιπμ]/ και απελενøεþοσ ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π] (my emphasis).
28 Strom. 7.106-108. See also Boulluec, Alain Le, La notion d'heresie dans la litterature grecque IIe-IIIe siécles (2 vols.; Paris: Etudes Augustiniennes, 1985) 2. 428–31.Google Scholar
29 Strom. εομιμοσ απνλøεν ισ þωμιπμ]/ και απελενøεþοσ ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π].
30 Strom. 7.108.1: σισαμκαλια παπασ. In a comparison of this passage with Hippolytus's Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.1, Fenton John Anthony Hort and Joseph B. Mayor suggest that only the followers of Basilides appealed to Matthias as their apostolic authority (Clement of Alexandria , Miscellanies Book VII [trans, and ed. Hort, Fenton John Anthony and Mayor, Joseph B.; Greek and Roman Philosophy 9; 1902; reprinted New York/London: Garland, 1987] 354 n. 14)Google Scholar . Hippolytus does link Matthias specifically with Basilides, but it is not necessary to harmonize Clement with Hippolytus. For this study, it is important to note simply that they employ a similar strategy. Hippolytus also uses this strategy t o condemn other Christian groups, most notably, the Naassenes, who allegedly follow the teachings of James transmitted through Mariamme (Ref. 5.2).
31 See, for example, Strom. 1.1.3; 5.15.1-3; 7.53.5. Clement rhetorically depicts himself as the father of his audience throughout the Paidagogos (see 1.1.1; 1.4.1: “O my children” [σισαμκαλια
32 Compare this with Clement's accusations against non-Christian teachers: “At this point, I think, there is nothing to stop me from mentioning the Peripatetics also. The father of this sect, because he did not perceive the father of all things, thinks that the one who is called ‘the highest’ is the soul of all; that is, he considers the soul of the world to be God, and thus contradicts (σισαμκαλια) himself (Prot. 66.4) (my emphasis). The verb neptneipeiv serves in this context as a pun on “peripatetic” (σισαμκαλια). While it has a vivid meaning of “to pierce” or “to put on a spit,” Clement and other early Christian authors employ this term to suggest that someone has contradicted himself or herself and become “entangled” or “skewered” upon false opinion.
33 Strom. 7.106.4: απελενøεþοσ ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π].
34 Alex, Clement. Strom. 7.103.6–7.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., 1.1.1-1.17.4.
36 Strom. 3.34.3: απελενøεþοσ ελενεπ[ο]/ καιμαþοσ ιμα οπικια λαβ[π].
37 In this study, I focus upon the allegation of heresy on the basis of the identity of founding fathers. Clement also identifies other heresies from origins other than individuals, such as geographical location, practice, and doctrine. The fascination with origins nonetheless persists: “Of the heresies, some are called after a name, like the ones named after Valentinus, Marcion, and Basilides, even though they claim to follow the opinion of Matthias, for just as the teaching, so also the tradition which came from all the apostles is one; others are called after a place, like the Peratikoi; others are called by nationality (σισαμκαλειον), like the Phrygians; others by action, like the Enkratites; others by their own doctrines, like the Docetics and the Bloods (σισαμκαλειον); others by premises (σισαμκαλειον) which they honor, like the Cainites and the so-called Ophites; others by their unlawful habits and recklessness, like the Simonians who are called the σισαμκαλειον (Strom. 7.108.1-2). Alain Le Boulluec has noted that this schema reveals Clement's familiarity with contemporary philosophical distinctions among sects, noting that this passage closely resembles one in the prologue to Diogenes'Laertius's Life of the Philosophers (1.17) (Boulluec, Le, La notion d'heresie, 2. 264).Google Scholar
38 Broudehoux, Jean-Paul, Mariage et Famille chez Clement d'Alexandrie (Paris: Beauchesne, 1970) 99–113.Google Scholar
39 Strom. 3.98.4: σισαμκαλειονσισαμκαλειονσισαμκαλειον (my emphasis).
40 This analogy appears in other contexts as well; for example, “the genuine person creates (σισαμκαλειον) and remakes (σισαμκαλειον) the person receiving catechetical instruction, making him new (σισαμκαλειον) for the purpose of salvation” (Strom. 7.52.2); “[The gnostic Christian] offers himself on behalf of the Church, on behalf of the students (σισαμκαλειον) whom he has begotten (σισαμκαλειον) in faith” (Strom. 7.53.5); “and in the Symposium he [Plato] says that there is instilled into all the natural love (eprae (σισαμκαλειον) of generating what is like (σισαμκαλειον), and for humans (σισαμκαλειον), only [other] humans, and for the good/earnest person (σισαμκαλειον), one's counterpart. But it is impossible for the good man to do this without possessing the perfect virtues, in which he will educate the youth who come to him, even as he says in the Theaetetus: “He will beget and finish men; For while some conceive (Kuelv) according to the body, others do so according to the soul.” Even among barbarian philosophers, to teach and enlighten is called to regenerate (σισαμκαλειον): 'I have begotten you in Jesus Christ,' says the good apostle somewhere [1 Cor 4:15]” (ibid., 5.15.1-3).
41 Strom. 3.97.4-98.3: σισαμκαλειον σισαμκαλειον(my emphasis throughout).
42 This saying is an agraphon.
43 Isa 56:3-5.
44 Isa 65:23.
45 Strom. 3.98.5: σισαμκαλια παπασ σισαμκαλειον σιασοξν (my emphasis).
46 The metaphorical use of kinship language raises the question of how to understand the father/son relationship attributed to Basilides and Isidoros. In two instances, Clement specifically describes the latter as the former's son: “the son of Basilides, Isidoros” (σιασοξνσιασοξν σιασοξν σιασοξν) (Strom. 2.113.3); “And Isidoros, the son and pupil of Basilides” (σιασοξνσιασοξνσιασοξν) (ibid., 6.53.2). While their relationship may well be more than metaphorical, it is premature to assume “literal” kinship until proven metaphorical, especially when discussing intellectual lineages. The second passage may imply that Clement believes Isidoros to be both Basilides' physical and intellectual offspring.
The figure of Epiphanes offers a slightly different example. By presenting the names and geographical backgrounds of both his father and mother, Clement implies that Epiphanes was the physical offspring of Karpokrates and Alexandria (Strom. 3.5.2). It is also possible, however, to interpret Clement's entire description of this lineage as a metaphor to explain the origins of the movement against which he is writing. In addition, while Clement identifies Alexandria as Epiphanes' mother, he associates only father and son with the exposition of doctrine (see, for example, ibid., 3.9.2). I thank Annewies van den Hoek for her suggestion t o pursue the possible use of kinship metaphors in these contexts.
47 Hoek, Van den, “How Alexandrian?” 188.Google Scholar
48 , Coxe, “Introductory note to Gregory Thaumaturgus,” 3.Google Scholar
49 Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza describes this as the difference between the “textually inscribed rhetorical situation, on the one hand, and the possible historical situation on the other” (“The Rhetoricity of Historical Knowledge: Pauline Discourse and Its Contextualizations,” in Bormann, Lukas, Tredici, Kelly Del, and Standhartinger, Angela, eds., Religious Propaganda and Missionary Competition in the New Testament World: Essays Honoring Dieter Georgi [Leiden: Brill, 1994] 447, emphasis original).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 I owe this last felicitous turn of phrase to Allen Callahan. I find it particularly appropriate for a study of procreative language, given Darwin's own use of procreative imagery in the formulation of his theory of evolution (see, for example, John Angus Campbell, “Scientific Discovery and Rhetorical Invention: The Path to Darwin's Origin,” in Simons, Herbert W., ed., The Rhetorical Turn: Invention and Persuasion in the Conduct of Inquiry [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990] 58–90)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.