The Writings of Clement

All eight of Clement’s Stromateis are preserved among us, and he gave them this title: “Titus Flavius Clement’s Stromateis of Gnostic Notes according to the True Philosophy.” [a] His books entitled Hypotyposes, or Outlines, are equal in number. In them he names Pantaenus as his teacher and sets out his interpretations of the Scriptures and his traditions. [b] Besides these there is his Exhortation to the Greeks; the three books of the work entitled the Instructor; another treatise of his, with the title Who Is the Rich Man That Is Saved?; the work On the Passover; discourses On Fasting and On Slander; the Exhortation to Endurance, or To the Newly Baptized; and the one entitled The Church’s Rule, or Against the Judaizers, which he dedicated to Alexander, the bishop already mentioned. [c]

In the Stromateis he has spread out like a patchwork not only the divine Scripture, but also the writings of the Greeks, whenever anything they said seemed to him useful. [d] He mentions the opinions held by most people, unfolding those of Greeks and barbarians alike, and also corrects the false teachings of the heresiarchs. He sets out a great deal of history, giving us a groundwork of wide learning, and with all this he mixes the doctrines of the philosophers. That is likely why he gave the work the title Stromateis, to suit its subject. In these books he also uses testimonies from the disputed writings: the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach, the Letter to the Hebrews, and the letters of Barnabas, Clement and Jude. [e] He mentions Tatian’s Address to the Greeks, and Cassian as having also written a chronology. He also mentions the Jewish writers Philo, Aristobulus, Josephus, Demetrius and Eupolemus, as all showing in their writings that Moses and the Jewish race are older than the earliest origins of the Greeks. [f] These books of his are full of much other useful learning as well. In the first of them he shows that he himself came very close to the succession of the apostles. [g] In them he promises also to write a commentary on Genesis. In his treatise On the Passover he admits that his companions pressed him to hand down in writing, to those who would come after, the traditions he had heard from the ancient presbyters. In it he mentions Melito, Irenaeus and some others, and sets down their accounts.