14. ST. CLEMENT’S CITATIONS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

In my last post, I discussed divine inspiration, revelation and Biblical errancy.  Now I propose a somewhat odd simile.  Think of divine inspiration as the crucial information which various witnesses have been given.  Revelation is the testimony the witnesses give at the trial.  The stenographer corresponds in this simile to the scribe taking dictation from a Biblical author.  

The value of this simile is that it makes it clear that everything depends on the testimony; nobody in his right mind would imagine that the stenographer can have anything but one role to play:  to get things straight.  He does not add his own remarks to the testimony.  His only value lies in staying out of the way.   Any value his transcript has is due exclusively to its fidelity to the court proceedings. 

Is there any corroboration for this unusual comparison?

St. Clement’s epistle to the Corinthians might do.¹  We note that this epistle, which was written towards the end of the 1^st century, contains numerous citations of the Old Testament. 

St. Clement uses several expressions to quote the Old Testament:  “it is written,” “that which was written,” “it says” etc.  Most of his citations use these kinds of standard expressions.  He also says “the Scripture bears witness” (XXIII.5) and “Scripture says” (XXXIV.6 and XLII.5), expressions which seem to support the court-room simile proposed above.

Other times he introduces quotes in a very different way.  E.g., he introduces a quote from Gen. 2.23 (“This is now bone of my bone etc.”) in VI.3 as “the saying of our father Adam”.  He also introduces a quote from Ez. (33.11-27) by saying that “the Master of all things spoke.” 

St. Clement often introduces a quote with “God says” (VIII.4, X.2, XIV.5, XVIII.1 etc.; cf. XXXII.2, XXXIII.5). In XIII.1, of Jer. 9.23-24, St. Clement says, “the Holy Spirit says.”  In XXII.1, he introduces an Old Testament citation of Ps. 33:12 (LXX) by saying that “Christ . . . himself through his Holy Spirit calls us thus.”  Introducing a quote of Ps. 2.7-8, he says, “But of his Son the Master said thus:  ‘Thou art my son etc.’”(XXXVI.4).

To wrap it up:  in addition to standard ways of citing Scripture, St. Clement also likes to refer to speakers, not just documents.

Next time we will draw a few inferences from this fact.

ENDNOTES FOR THE CURIOUS

1.  The Apostolic Fathers is what we call the earliest fathers after the apostles.  The proper term is sub-apostolic, where sub- means immediately adjacent (The Concise Oxford Dictionary).  The earliest were contemporaries of St. John the Theologian.  There are several collections of their writings of the Apostolic Fathers in print and online.  The online versions tend to be done in archaic English; the best version online may be J. B. Lightfoot’s.