Type this book, chapter by chapter. Progress is saved on this device.
Begin Typing VigilThe writing which has always been known by this name is clearly, from internal evidence, a letter sent by the church of Rome to the church of Corinth in consequence of trouble in the latter community which had led to the deposition of certain Presbyters. The church of Rome writes protesting against this deposition, and the partizanship which has caused it.
The actual name of the writer is not mentioned in the letter itself: indeed, it clearly claims to be not the letter of a single person but of a church. Tradition, however, has always ascribed it to Clement, who was, according to the early episcopal lists, the third or fourth bishop of Rome during the last decades of the first century. There is no reason for rejecting this tradition, for though it is not supported by any corroborative evidence in its favour there is nothing whatever against it.
Nothing certain is known of Clement; but from the amount of pseudepigraphic literature attributed to him it is probable that he was a famous man in his own time. Tradition has naturally identified him with the Clement who is mentioned in Philippians 4:3. A Clement is also mentioned in the Shepherd of Hermas 8:3, in which it is stated that it was his duty to write to other churches. This certainly points to a Clement in Rome exercising the same functions as the writer of 1 Clement; but Hermas is probably somewhat later than 1 Clement, and the reference may be merely a literary device based on knowledge of the earlier book.
It is noteworthy that 1 Clement appears to be treated by Clement of Alexandria as Scripture, and this, especially in connection with its position in the codex Alexandrinus and in the Strassburg Coptic manuscripts, where it is directly joined on to the canonical books, suggests that at an early period in Alexandria and Egypt 1 Clement was regarded as part of the New Testament.
Included here are the Catholic Epistles, Hebrews, and the formerly canonical works of the Second Testament.