ABSTRACT
Competing strategies of appropriation and exclusion were evident not only in early Christian negotiations of their relationship with Jewishness, but also in their constructions of their relationships with the wider Greco-Roman world. In the case of early Christian engagement with the philosophical traditions, appreciating the contours of the thought of those Christian authors who participated in these debates helps us to see them not as passive receivers, but as constructive philosophers in their own right. In this chapter, I will consider how Clement theorizes his own philosophical positions in the larger intellectual environment of his period. In his negotiation of his relationship to classical philosophy, we find him deploying the “dependency theme,” a trope found in Josephus, Justin, and Tatian, as well as in Numenius, that Plato received his philosophy from the writings of Moses.1 As he says in Protrepticus 6.70.1;
Whence, Plato, do you intimate the truth? Whence this plentiful abundance of arguments, which prophesizes piety? The barbarian peoples (βαρβάρων τὰ γένη) are wiser than these, he says. I know your teachers, even if you wish to keep them hidden. You learned geometry from the Egyptians, astronomy from the Babylonians, you received healing charms from the Thracians, and the Assyrians also taught (pεpαιδεύκασι) you many things, but with respect to the laws, insofar as they are true, and with respect to the glory of God, you were aided by the Hebrews (τῶν Ἑβραίων).
