Preliminary material /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- CONCEPTS AND METHODS /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE HAGAR AND SARAH MOTIF /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE STORY OF MOSES /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE LAW AND THE VIRTUES /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE TEMPLE, VESTMENTS AND THE HIGH PRIEST /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE SHORT SEQUENCES /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- THE ISOLATED REFERENCES /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- CONCLUSIONS /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- BIBLIOGRAPHY /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- INDEX /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- SAMENVATTING /Johanna Louise van den Hoek -- CURRICULUM VITAE /Johanna Louise van den Hoek.

The "Stromateis" of Clement of Alexandria (c.150-215 CE) has received much scholarly debate over whether it can be accorded the role of the third and highest phase of his pedagogy. This was a treatise that promised an account of the true philosophy of Christ set down for Christians seeking higher knowledge of doctrine. This book takes a new approach to deciphering the nature and purpose of these enigmatic books concentrating on the close relationship between method and doctrine, and the number and sequence of the texts as they have come down to us. The outcome is a concise summary of current scholarship on Clement s method and a fresh picture of how he applies it to the transmission of esoteric doctrines.

In Clement’s Biblical Exegesis scholars from six countries explore various facets of Clement of Alexandria’s hermeneutical theory and his exegetical practice. Although research on Clement has tended to emphasize his use of philosophical sources, Clement was important not only as a Christian philosopher, but also as a pioneer Christian exegete. His works constitute a crucial link in the tradition of Alexandrian exegesis, but his biblical exegesis has received much less attention than that of Philo or Origen. Topics discussed include how Clement’s methods of allegorical interpretation compare with those of Philo, Origen, and pagan exegetes of Homer, and his readings of particular texts such as Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, John 1, 1 John, and the Pauline letters.

In The Moral Psychology of Clement of Alexandria, Kathleen Gibbons proposes a new approach to Clement’s moral philosophy and explores how his construction of Christianity’s relationship with Jewishness informed, and was informed by, his philosophical project. As one of the earliest Christian philosophers, Clement’s work has alternatively been treated as important for understanding the history of relations between Christianity and Judaism and between Christianity and pagan philosophy. This study argues that an adequate examination of his significance for the one requires an adequate examination of his significance for the other. While the ancient claim that the writings of Moses were read by the philosophical schools was found in Jewish, Christian, and pagan authors, Gibbons demonstrates that Clement’s use of this claim shapes not only his justification of his authorial project, but also his philosophical argumentation. In explaining what he took to be the cosmological, metaphysical, and ethical implications of the doctrine that the supreme God is a lawgiver, Clement provided the theoretical justifications for his views on a range of issues that included martyrdom, sexual asceticism, the status of the law of Moses, and the relationship between divine providence and human autonomy. By contextualizing Clement’s discussions of volition against wider Greco-Roman debates about self-determination, it becomes possible to reinterpret the invocation of “free will” in early Christian heresiological discourse as part of a larger dispute about what human autonomy requires.

The so-called eighth Stromateus (‘liber logicus’) by Clement of Alexandria (d. before 221 C.E.) is an understudied source for ancient philosophy, particularly the tradition of the Aristotelian methodology of science, scepticism, and the theories of causation. A series of capitula dealing with inquiry and demonstration, it bears but few traces of Christian interests. In this volume, Matyáš Havrda provides a new edition, translation, and lemmatic commentary of the text. The vexing question of the origin of this material and its place within Clement’s oeuvre is also addressed. Defending the view of ‘liber logicus’ as a collection of excerpts made or adopted by Clement for his own (apologetic and exegetical) use, Havrda argues that its source could be Galen’s lost treatise On Demonstration.

Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness in Early Christian Writings investigates portrayals of the first-century philosopher and exegete Philo of Alexandria, in the writings of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Eusebius. It argues that early Christian invocations of Philo are best understood not as attempts simply to claim an illustrious Jew for the Christian fold, but as examples of ongoing efforts to define the continuities and distinctive features of Christian beliefs and practices in relation to those of the Jews. This study takes as its starting point the curious fact that none of the first three Christians to mention Philo refer to him unambiguously as a Jew. Clement, the first in the Christian tradition to openly cite Philo's works, refers to him twice as a Pythagorean. Origen, who mentions Philo by name only three times, makes far more frequent reference to him in the guise of an anonymous "one who came before us." Eusebius, who invokes Philo on many more occasions than does Clement or Origen, most often refers to Philo as a Hebrew. These epithets construct Philo as an alternative "near-other" to both Christians and Jews, through whom ideas and practices may be imported to the former from the latter, all the while establishing boundaries between the "Christian" and "Jewish" ways of life. The portraits of Philo offered by each author reveal ongoing processes of difference-making and difference-effacing that constituted not only the construction of the Jewish "other," but also the Christian "self."

Books One to Three of the Stromateis establish Clement's fundamental theology--a harmony of faith and knowledge that places Greek philosophy at the service of faith, which is, to Clement, more important than knowledge.