Monday, November 27, 2023

Paul Foster on the Use of Hebrews in 1 Clement

  

Hebrews

 

Since Hebrews circulated with manuscripts of the Pauline letters it is appropriate to treat it with this corpus of New Testament writings. There is only one passage in the writings of the Apostolic fathers for which dependence on Hebrews may be plausibly suggested. The parallel is between 1 Clem. 36 and Heb. 1. For A. J. Carlyle the parallelism was deeded to be of such strength that he could state, “There can be practically no doubt that in this passage we have a reminiscence of the first chapter of Hebrews.” Clement quotes Pss. 2.7; 104.4; and 110.1 in common with Heb. 1, although there are differences in terms of the textual citations in 1 Clem. 36 and Heb. 1. The more striking parallel is the material that the two passages share when they are not citing traditions from the Jewish scriptures. 1 Clement states of Christ, “he, being the radiance of his majesty, is as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent” (1 Clem. 36.2). This is an abbreviated form of material found in Hebrews, the relevant passages reading: “he is the radiance of his glory . . . having become as much better than the angels, as he has inherited a more excellent name than they” (Heb. 1.3a, 4). The correspondence is not perfect, but it indicates some type of relationship between the two passages. Some have not been as confident as Carlyle concerning the strength of the relationship, noting that this may just show dependence on an excerpted passage from 1 Clement, or eve the possibility of a common source. However, given the cumulative weight of three common citations from the Jewish scriptures, and the similarity of wording with Heb. 1.3-4 where earlier material is not being cited, this appears to be a reasonably strong example for establishing the dependence of 1 Clement on Hebrews. (Paul Foster, “The Text of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Apostolic Fathers, ed. Michael F. Bird and Scott D. Harrower [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021], 115-16)