On "The Stromata" by Clement of Alexandria **

I decided to follow up reading by Justin Martyr, Ignatius of Antioch, and Irenaeus of Lyons, with this work by Clement, another long book that is exactly what its translated title suggests it is: miscellanies. As such, the work does not easily hold ones interest for long periods, though certainly it does a good job of showing some of the development of Christian thinking among those in Egypt in the late second century. (I am somewhat amazed as what remains from this period before printing--that folks felt a desire to write copies of this out to preserve it, given its length and lack of through-line.)

Clement spends much of the work referencing Greek and Roman philosophy, in addition to various biblical passages. The latter, he sometimes engages with by offering analogies to show how a given biblical idea fits within a moral concept of Christians (e.g., clean and unclean meats as symbolic of different kinds of thinking). The former, he spends much time referencing as inferior to Christian thinking, as antithetical to it, and as a predescessor to it. Through philosophy, Clement claims at some points, God brought Gentiles to a knowledge of the truth and of Jesus, just as through scriptures were Jews brought to such knowledge. But being a miscellany, Clement's views differ from section to section and purpose to purpose.

Book 8, being the most freshly on my mind, shows something of how Clement's thinking was in many ways more philosophically disposed than biblically. That book focuses not on anything religious but on ideas about symbology, writing, words, and names--how language came to exist as it does.