1 Clement part one

I am about halfway through the letter to the Corinthians attributed to Clement and will share a few observations.

*Like many books of the bible, the letter does not mention Clement or say that he is the author. It says that it is from the church in Rome. I'm not sure how  it has been established that Clement actually wrote this letter. It does not give a clear indication of the date of the writing but would have to have happened after the deaths of Peter and Paul, whom he mentions.  Like the books of the bible, the original of the letter no longer exists.

*The letter is a rambling treatise that seems to have a general theme of "get right church." It does not go into detail about the nature of the issues the Corinthians are experiencing except to repeatedly use words like strife, sedition, and emulation. The word emulation has me puzzled. Is he talking about oneupmanship?

*Between the exhortations to shape up, the letter is a jumbled mash-up of paraphrased old testament stories and scriptural quotes, with no particular order or literary structure. There has been mention of Abraham, Moses, Cain and Abel, Noah, Lot, Joshua, Rahab, and David. Old Testament scriptural quotes have come from Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Job, and Jeremiah. These quotes are often worded slightly differently than how they occur in my NIV, which is not surprising. Also, a few quotes are pieced together from mutiple books, or don't actually exist in modern bibles.

*So far, very few quoted scriptures appear to come from the New Testament writings. Some that could also have parallels in the Old Testament. Others seem more clearly to have come from the books of 2 Peter, Hebrews, and James. (Unless those authors borrowed from this letter, which seems unlikely.) There is one passage quoting Jesus that appears to have come from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew. There is also a quote from the apocryphal book of Wisdom of Solomon.

*There are repeated mentions of the resurrection of the christ and the hope of future resurrection for believers. Jesus is called the first fruit of resurrection. Of great interest to me was the legendary story of the phoenix (chapter xxv), told as if true and given as proof of God's power and ability to perform resurrections. Yes, really. The author assures us that nothing is impossible with god but to lie.

*We are given very few details of Jesus's life, or the lives of Paul and Peter, who are said to have worked hard for the church and were martyred. Jesus is said to have descended from Abraham, which is basically another way to say he was a Jew. So far, I've seen very little mention of the actual practices of the church in Rome or Corinth, other than the mention of "presbyters."

To be continued.