Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui THE PROTREPTICUS OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: A COMMENTARY to; ga;r yeu'do" ouj yilh'/ th'/ paraqevsei tajlhqou'" diaskedavnnutai, th'/ de; crhvsei th'" ajlhqeiva" ejkbiazovmenon fugadeuvetai. La falsedad no se dispersa por la simple comparación con la verdad, sino que la práctica de la verdad la fuerza a huir. Protréptico 8.77.3 PREFACIO Una tesis doctoral debe tratar de contribuir al avance del conocimiento humano en su disciplina, y la pretensión de que este comentario al Protréptico tenga la máxima utilidad posible me obliga a escribirla en inglés porque es la única lengua que hoy casi todos los interesados pueden leer. Pero no deja de ser extraño que en la casa de Nebrija se deje de lado la lengua castellana. La deuda que contraigo ahora con el español sólo se paliará si en el futuro puedo, en compensación, “dar a los hombres de mi lengua obras en que mejor puedan emplear su ocio”. Empiezo ahora a saldarla, empleándola para estos agradecimientos, breves en extensión pero no en sinceridad. Mi gratitud va, en primer lugar, al Cardenal Don Gil Álvarez de Albornoz, fundador del Real Colegio de España, a cuya generosidad y previsión debo dos años provechosos y felices en Bolonia. Al Rector, José Guillermo García-Valdecasas, que administra la herencia de Albornoz con ejemplar dedicación, eficacia y amor a la casa. A todas las personas que trabajan en el Colegio y hacen que cumpla con creces los objetivos para los que se fundó. Y a mis compañeros bolonios durante estos dos años. Ha sido un honor muy grato disfrutar con todos ellos de la herencia albornociana. En Bolonia debo agradecer también al Profesor Lorenzo Perrone su guía experta y paciente por los senderos de la tradición alejandrina antigua y los de la patrística moderna. En Madrid, a los profesores Alberto Bernabé y Antonio Piñero, que mantuvieron desde la distancia su disponibilidad y colaboración académica y personal en todo momento. Y también el Ministerio de Educación de España que me concedió una beca postdoctoral para investigar en Bolonia. Sin la ayuda de todos los aquí mencionados, y de algunos más, no habría sido posible realizar el comentario. No son responsables de ninguno de los errores que pueden encontrarse. Pero sí han contribuido, cada uno a su modo, a enseñarme que “la práctica de la verdad ahuyenta la falsedad”. Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui Bolonia, 6 de Febrero de 2008 5 CONTENTS Introduction......................................................................................................................9 1. Clement: his life, work and environment.............................................................9 2. Composition of the Protrepticus........................................................................14 3. Contents..............................................................................................................15 4. The protreptic discourse.....................................................................................20 5. Style....................................................................................................................23 6. Audience.............................................................................................................27 7. The Protrepticus in apologetic tradition.............................................................28 8. Sources...............................................................................................................32 9. Philosophical background..................................................................................36 10. Biblical background..........................................................................................39 11. Theology and anthropology..............................................................................42 12. Transmission and reception..............................................................................45 13. The text.............................................................................................................49 This commentary............................................................................................................51 Abbreviations.................................................................................................................52 Reading text....................................................................................................................55 Chapter I.....................................................................................................................109 Old Song vs New Song.........................................................................................111 The cosmic music of the Logos............................................................................117 Theological presentation of the Logos.................................................................119 Biblical presentation of the Logos........................................................................122 Chapter II......................................................................................................................127 The condemnation of Greek divination................................................................127 The condemnation of Greek mysteries.................................................................129 Greek Atheism......................................................................................................145 The heavenly origin of fallen man........................................................................147 The seven ways of idolatry...................................................................................148 Exhortation to run back to Heaven.......................................................................149 The multiplicity of homonymous gods.................................................................150 Human features of the gods..................................................................................151 Immorality of Greek gods....................................................................................153 Slavery of the gods...............................................................................................156 Human passions in the gods.................................................................................157 Divinization of men..............................................................................................159 Theriomorphic gods..............................................................................................161 Gods are daemons.................................................................................................162 Chapter III....................................................................................................................165 Greek gods demand human death.........................................................................165 Greek men are better than Greek gods.................................................................167 The beginning of superstition...............................................................................168 Sanctuaries are Tombs..........................................................................................170 Chapter IV....................................................................................................................173 Statues...................................................................................................................174 Egypt: Sarapis and Antinoos................................................................................176 The Sibyll and Heraclitus against statues.............................................................178 Statues are insensible............................................................................................179 7 Greeks themselves do not trust statues.................................................................181 Fire........................................................................................................................181 Artists...................................................................................................................182 Deified men..........................................................................................................183 Against Greek gods..............................................................................................185 Art can deceive.....................................................................................................186 Immorality of Greek gods and their images.........................................................188 Exhortation to adore God instead of his works....................................................190 Chapter V......................................................................................................................193 Philosophers deified elements..............................................................................193 Chapter VI....................................................................................................................199 Critique of philosophy..........................................................................................200 Plato helps in the quest for truth...........................................................................200 God is heavenly and unseeable.............................................................................202 God is the true measure........................................................................................204 Plato depends from Hebraic wisdom....................................................................205 Other philosophers had intuitions of the truth......................................................206 Chapter VII...................................................................................................................209 Some Pagan poets have sung the truth.................................................................209 Greek poets bring also testimony against the gods..............................................212 Chapter VIII..................................................................................................................215 Biblical prophecies lead to truth...........................................................................216 Chapter IX....................................................................................................................221 The legitimate children of God.............................................................................222 The Threat of Punishment....................................................................................224 The Logos brings theosebeia................................................................................226 Chapter X......................................................................................................................231 Diatribe against custom........................................................................................231 The Lord offers salvation from human vices........................................................233 Exhortation to conversion.....................................................................................235 Attack against idols..............................................................................................238 Exhortation to ascend to Heaven..........................................................................241 Wake up from sleep..............................................................................................242 Against divinization of concepts..........................................................................243 Knowledge of the true God against ignorance.....................................................244 God gives true Life...............................................................................................248 Chapter XI....................................................................................................................251 The Logos saves man from the slavery of earthly pleasure.................................251 The Logos brings true wisdom.............................................................................252 The Logos brings light..........................................................................................254 Exhortation to be worthy of salvation..................................................................256 Chapter XII...................................................................................................................261 The dangerous music of the Sirens.......................................................................261 The Christian Mysteries of the Logos..................................................................263 Discourse of Jesus as the Logos...........................................................................267 Last exhortations..................................................................................................268 Select Bibliography......................................................................................................271 Analytic index..............................................................................................................279 8 Introduction 1. Clement: his life, work and environment Clement’s life seems to push him to lead the fusion of Greek and Christian cultural traditions: he travelled and knew different places and teachers as only a well-to do educated Roman citizen could do, he settled in the favorable environment of Alexandria to teach peacefully and write his work, and at the end of his life perhaps he experienced that the life of a Christian was not so pleasant as he might have thought. Apart from a few self-references in Clement’s own work, most of the scarce information that we can gather about his life comes from the works of Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote around one hundred years after Clement had died1. Eusebius’ statements, therefore, must not be taken at face value. Most of them seem coherent with what we would expect, but some are likely to result from his own idealization of the first great master of the Alexandrian school. Titus Flavius Clemens was born around 150-160 AD in Athens2. Eusebius (PE 2.2.64) says that he was born in a Pagan family, and that in his youth, after having been initiated into Greek mysteries, he converted to Christianity. Since the piece of news about initiation in the mysteries is clearly false3 there is some reason to doubt also his being Pagan4 and then converting, though it has traditionally been accepted on Eusebius’ word. His broad knowledge of Greek authors would be coherent with a Pagan background, but an educated Christian environment would also know well Plato and Homer. Against Eusebius, it can be argued that when Clement preaches conversion, he never makes the slightest autobigraphical reference, and that an upper-middle-class Athenian would be very likely to be initiated in his youth, which was most probably not the case. The Protrepticus is likely to be, therefore, an exhortation to a religious conversion that he has never experienced himself. Perhaps Clement’s love for 1 Eusebius’ passages and the few other references to Clement’s life are collected by O. Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus, Leipzig 1905, vol. I. IX-XVI. 2 Epiphanius (Haer. 32.6) says that some call him Alexandrian, but it clearly refers to his place of work, not of birth. On his Roman name (coincident with a consul put to death under Domitian for being a Christian), cf. R. Feulner, Clemens von Alexandrien, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, 24. 3 Cf. commentary to Protr. 2.12. A. Le Boulluec in his work on the origins of Alexandrian school (cf. n.5) does not exclude the possibility that Eusebius’ is inventing a Pagan origin (n. 29). 4 I will use the admittedly anachronic term “Pagan” for the sake of convenience, to avoid the exceses of extreme rigour like “attached to non-Christian and non-Jewish religious cults”. Other possibilities like “Greek” or “Hellenes” (Clement’s own term) would bring more confusion than clarity. The term “Pagan”, however, should be devoid of any apologetic implication. I follow thus the usage of P. Athanassiadi-M. Frede, Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity, Oxford 1999, 8f. 9 Hellenism comes precisely from his not having to fight back against his own Greek past. Clement speaks in a famous passage of the Stromata (1.11.1-2) about his Christian masters, in geographical-chronological order: “one of them, an Ionian, lived in Greece; two others, from Coele-Syria and Egypt respectively, were in Magna Graecia; others were in the East, one from Assyria, another a Hebrew from Palestine. I found the last of them where he was hiding in Egypt. Here I came to rest. He was a real Sicilian bee who drew from the flowers of the apostolic and prophetic meadow and who engendered a purity of knowledge in the soul of his hearers”. This passage describes his mobility throughout the Eastern Mediterranean until he settled in Alexandria, and the variety of his teachers. There have been attempts to identify the Ionian teacher with Athenagoras and the Syrian with Tatian. These attempts remain, however, mere speculation5. But the last teacher is well known: the Sicilian Pantenus, whom the tradition establishes as the first leader of the so-called Alexandrian catechetical school, and whose successor would have been Clement himself6. Yet words like “school” an “succession” must be handled with precaution. There is much discussion about the nature of these Christian schools in the 2nd-3rd centuries, and specially about the didaskaleion of Alexandria, where it is easy to project (even for 4th century sources like Eusebius) the much more sophisticated model of later centuries. Far from the traditional view of an ecclesiastical school controlled by the bishop, with a firm succession of leaders as in philosophical haireseis, they should be rather seen as private gatherings of students who wanted to obtain advanced knowledge of theology, and studied. Their relation with the official Church is loose and imprecise, while it presents affinities to the tradition of Jewish Rabbis who instructed on how to lead religious life7. Clement himself seems, by some ambiguous allusions throughout his 5 Cf. R. B. Tollinton Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Liberalism, London, 1914, 12-16; on relations of Clement with previous apologetic literature, cf. infra intr. §7. 6 Eus. HE 6.6; Hieron. Vir. Ill. 38 (PL 23.686). On Pantaenus, cf. the survey of the sources and inerpretations in the inital part of A. Le Boulluec, “Aux origines, encore, de l’”école” d’Alexandrie”, Adamantius 5 (1999), 7-36 (= Alexandrie Antique et Chrétienne, Paris 2006, 29-62; the page number quoted refers to this reedition). 7 G. Bardy, “Aux origines de l'École d'Alexandrie”, Rech Sc rel 27 (1937), 65-90, was the first to question the nature of the official school described by Eusebius. The absene of a supreme episcopal power and a fix rule of succession are now accepted by all as features of the Alexandrian didaskaleion (cf. Le Boulluec, op. cit. 42f). Cf. the studies of R. Van der Broek, “The Christian 'School' of Alexandria in the Second and Third Centuries”, in J.W. Drijvers – A.A. McDonald, Centres of Learning : Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, Leiden-New York-Köln, 1995, 39-47; and A. Van der Hoek, “The Catechetical School of Early Christian Alexandria and its Philonic Heritage”, HThR 90.1 (1997), 59-87. E. Osborn, Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge, 2005, 19-24 synthesizes the results of both 10