Once Again, 70 (1 Clem. 40-44)
In 1 Clement 40-44 the author
invokes the temple administration in order to demonstrate a divine preference
for liturgical and institutional order. In this text, 1 Clement uses the
present tense to describe the temple administration. As always, this is not sufficient
to demonstrate that the temple still stood at the time of writing. The text’s
rhetoric nonetheless poses some difficulties for a post-70 date. According to 1
Clement, just as God ordained the temple order (40-41), so too did God ordain
the emergent ecclesiastical order (42-44.3). Thus, it is unjust to remove from ministry
those appointed by the apostles and their successors (44.3-6). If written after
70, the audience could quite reasonably object that if this earlier divine
temple order was overturned by human agents, then too could be the current
ecclesial one. While his readers knew that the temple had in recent memory been
destroyed violently, how plausibly could 1 Clement 40.4, in the midst of
speaking of the temple administration, declare that “those, therefore, who make
their offsprings at the appointed times are acceptable and blessed, for
those who follow the instructions of the Master cannot go wrong”? (1 Clem. 40.4).
Such explicit declaration, that just as the temple administration is blessed
because it abides by divine ordinances so too are ecclesiastical administrations,
makes much greater sense before rather than after 70. Although this datum
cannot exclude a post-70 date, we should probably be inclined to favor a pre-70
one. (Jonathan Bernier, Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament: The
Evidence for Early Composition [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2022],
245-46, italics in original; Bernier places the authorship of this letter to 64-70)