To Theodore: A Forgery After All?

Andrew Criddle, in comments to a previous post, notes that one great difficulty with To Theodore is the admonition of Clement to Theodore to lie under oath about the authorship of the Secret Gospel.

Indeed, this is the most difficult wording of To Theodore to explain.  For, in Strom. 7.51, of course, Clement rather explicitly explains how the Christian "gnostic" is to behave with respect to oaths, and he makes it clear that no deception is permissible.  "He will neither lie nor commit perjury so as to wrong the Deity....The Gnostic swears truly..."  Indeed, the Gnostic is not to swear at all, or to lie, even on pain of death: "And so he swears not even when asked for his oath; nor does he ever deny, so as to speak falsehood, though he should die by tortures."

It is, however, somewhat incongruous to read 7.52 immediately after, and it seems like Clement is trying to admit that there may be exceptions, or even to have it both ways.  7.51 says "Nor yet will he lie or commit any transgression, for the sake of the neighbour whom he has learned to love, though he be not on terms of intimacy."  Yet Clement immediately follows this up with "But for the benefit of his neighbours alone, he will do things which would not have been done by him primarily, if he did not do them on their account," in 7.52.

We shouldn't eliminate the possibility that Clement sometimes talked out of both sides of his mouth, or tried to whitewash his teachings.

Nevertheless, lying under oath also seems like a pretty severe violation of Clement's teachings, so I admit it is unusual, and can't be easily explained away, given the texts that we have.

Nevertheless, I can at least refer to Book 1, where Clement writes

[The Lord] agreed that “those who were capable of receiving” should share in the mysteries of God and in that holy light.  Further, he did not reveal to the people in the street what was not for them; only to a few, to whom he knew it to be apposite, those who could accept the mysteries and be conformed to them….If anyone says that it is written in Scripture: “There is nothing hidden which shall not be revealed, nothing veiled which shall not be unveiled,” he must listen to us too when we say that in his pronouncement he foretold tha the hidden secret shall be revealed to the one who listens in secret and all that is veiled, like the truth, shall be shown to the one who is capable of receiving the traditions under a veil, and that which is hidden from the majority shall become clear to a minority….[T]he mysteries are transmitted mysteriously, so that they may be on the lips of speaker and listener—or rather not in their voices at all, but in their minds. (Strom. 1.13(1))

Since our tradition is not held in common or open to all, least of all when you realize the magnificence of the Word, it follows that we have to keep secret “the wisdom which is imparted in the context of a mystery,” taught by God’s Son….Even now I am careful (in the words of Scripture) about “throwing pearls down in front of pigs, in case they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.”  It is difficult to present arguments which are really pure and lucid, and concern the true light, to people who are like pigs in their lack of education….”The unspiritual person does not receive the gifts of God’s spirit; they are folly to him.”  “The wise do not produce in public the things which they discuss in council.”  But “announce from the housetops what you hear whispered in your year,” says the Lord.  He is telling us to receive the secret traditions of revealed knowledge, interpreted with outstanding loftiness and, as we have heard them whispered in our ears, to pass them on to appropriate people, not to offer them to all without reserve, when he only pronounced thoughts in parables to them. (Strom. 1.55-56(12))

If Clement writes often of speaking the truth, he writes nearly as often of veiling the truth, revealing it partially, or mystically.

Granted, however, that ordering Theodore to deny the authorship of Secret Mark directly, under oath, is surprisingly deceitful.  And so, having spent much effort arguing my way to the brink of genuine Clementine authorship, I'm going to step back, and admit that Clementine authorship remains problematic.  Why am I doing this?  Because I think Smith made a foundational mistake.  His greatest mistake was not reading both baptismal and sexual theology into Secret Mark (though those were indeed mistakes); instead, his greatest mistake came first.  Smith determined, based on vocabulary, that the letter was authentic Clement.  But we now know that the vocabulary is almost too Clementine to be true.  This would have been sufficient to fool Smith.

So, if the letter is not authentic, that must mean the critics are right, yes?  But not so fast--it doesn't mean that at all.  The letter need not be a modern forgery; in fact it's far more likely it was an ancient forgery (as forgeries of Christian authors were quite common in the ancient era.)

But even if it's ancient, we know it has to date to a later period--the fourth or fifth century, right?  Again, not so fast--we need not fast-forward two centuries to find an appropriate millieu for To Theodore.  We already have one, right after Clement's time, namely...among the Origenists!  The Origenists are the perfect source for an inauthentic Clementine letter--they were both sympathizers with Clement, but also went beyond him, extending the Noble Lie much further than he would have deemed permissible.  This is exactly the kind of school we might expect to produce a letter like To Theodore.


In fact...we don't even know it was a forgery at all!  What we really have is an eighteenth-century document, claiming to have found a letter among Clement's letters.  There's nothing to indicate the header of the copy of the letter, as Smith found it, dates to the ancient era.  Instead, someone--an eighteenth-century writer--simply found To Theodore among the letters of Clement, and they noted as such on the copy they made in the Voss book.

Now, to be sure, the letter is exceptionally Clementine.  This could be the deliberate work of an ancient forger--but it could also simply be the work of an ardent reader or follower of Clement, paying homage to the wisdom, words, and style of his teacher and predecessor.  Indeed, isn't this a much more likely scenario than one in which a fourth- (or fifth-) century scholar delved deeply into the writings of Clement of Alexandria, and produced a bogus letter, perfectly imitating Clementine style, simply in order to fight off some still-lingering heresies of that later time?

So, under my scenario, such a letter could easily have found its way into a collection of Clement's genuine letters.  If this collection belonged to an Origenist, it's likely it was located somewhere in Palestine--perhaps in Caesara itself.  It eventually made its way to Mar Saba, probably for safekeeping, perhaps during the Byzantine-Persian wars, though perhaps also in the early centuries of Muslim rule (or even during the Crusades).  1500 years after the letters were written, a visitor or monk at Mar Saba sorted through them, trying to preserve what he could, and found To Theodore.  He began to transcribe it, but stopped after he ran out of room--or, perhaps, stopped after reading something unexpected in the letter.  Perhaps he reacted to it with the same shock as Jerome reacted to Origen's teachings.