In contradistinction to many early Christian texts, 1 Clement offers its reader clear evidence of its occasion (the removal of the presbyters of the Christian Corinthian Church from their position of authority) and its intent (to create a new situation of peace and harmony in which the presbyters are reinstated). But, as Larry Welborn states in this strikingly learned, succinct and thoughtful monograph, very little consensus has been arrived at concerning the motive for the revolt and the identity of its perpetrators. Welborn promises to solve this problem by arguing that the revolt was aimed against an ageing hierarchy (elder carries a literal connotation), led by younger members of the community, who were motivated by ‘democratic’ instincts, inspired by Pauline models of authority.

Welborn's study is predicated upon a number of assumptions. The author of 1 Clement is well informed about the situation that he is addressing, a situation that is real (he rejects any idea that the epistle represents a kind of fiction). The absence of a detailed account of that situation is unsurprising given the fact that the work is, as van Unnik correctly argued, an example of deliberative (sumbouleutic) rhetoric in which emphasis is placed upon the future. Any good solution to the problem that Welborn has set himself must arise from the text itself, and must explain most aspects of the text. More specifically, Welborn asserts that for 1 Clement the Old Testament is the cipher through which Clement argues his case and due attention must be played to the context of its use. Also important to realise is the fact that 1 Clement respects Paul's letters but is not a straightforward follower of Paul. Welborn also asserts that the Church of 1 Clement consisted of a number of presbyters, whose election was recommended to the wider members of the Church by a group of eminent individuals (‘bishops’ were leaders of individual house churches). The Church is organised as a group of house churches and it is the challenge to the leadership of these entities which lies behind the difficulties that Clement encounters. The conflict is one which concerns the second or third generation of Christians in Corinth.

Welborn then turns to the meat of his thesis. He begins by showing that the letter is clear about the fact that young men are the chief perpetrators of the overthrow of the presbyters, a point made clear both in chapter 3, esp. 3.3 where, citing 1 Corinthians iv.10, Clement adds to the list of dualities ‘the young against the old’, by many of the Old Testament citations used by Clement, and by the manner in which the perpetrators are described – many of the criticisms thrown at them are found in ancient delineations of them in Graeco-Roman representations of the young. To advance his case further Welborn moves on to explore the nature of generational difference in antiquity, its demographics (in truth there were only two generations, such was the rate of mortality), its legal expression, emphasising, inter alia, the extraordinary power that fathers had over their sons; the limited nature of redress that sons could claim when treated arbitrarily by their fathers; the circumstances of generational strife; and ideologies relating to age, here examining attempts to defend and attack the status quo in which the old were accorded greater power than the young. He notes how such conflict reached significant levels in fifth-century Athens and in the Roman Republic, and how there were signs of its importance in the later first and second century; and he gives many examples of the manner in which such conflict is described. Returning to 1 Clement, Welborn shows how the manner in which Clement characterises the conflict (his emphasis, for instance, upon ‘stasis’, peaceableness, particular virtues), his harsh descriptions of those who were in revolt (Welborn emphasises that Clement's language in this respect is amongst the harshest depiction of opponents in early Christian texts), and the manner in which he calls for his opponents to submit to the presbyters, reflecting language of the same kind used to call upon wayward youths to comply with the wishes of their parents, all support the idea that generational conflict lies at the heart of the problems that the letter addresses.

Welborn cautiously attempts to reconstruct the circumstances of the revolt. According to him, it began with the revolt of one son who displaced his father as overseer of one of the Corinthian churches, and then spread more widely among the house churches. Such a scenario explains why Clement calls for the voluntary exile of one individual (p. 54) but the submission of a plurality to the presbyterate (p. 57) – the original leader had to go but the others are asked to return to their original house churches.

Also significant for Welborn is the role of some women in this generational conflict. In particular he draws attention to two passages where women and the young are contrasted with rulers and elders (1.3; 21.6-7) and he goes on to show how reference to women, especially in some Old Testament passages that Clement cites, highlights their role in the dispute (note the woman who had become other-minded from her husband like Lot's wife at 21.7). Citing the role of women like Sempronia in the Catilinarin conspiracy, Welborn argues that the women may have supplied the rebellious young men with financial support, support the women may have had from their dowries and which the young men were in strong need of, their fathers having deprived them of financial resources as Roman law allowed.

In discussing the motives for such a revolt, Welborn points to frustration on the part of the young at their exclusion from leadership roles (frequent reference in the text to presbyteroi should be taken literally), a trope which we find in a number of writers including Plutarch. Another motive could have related to the distribution of resources as implied in 1 Clem. 2.1 and its reference to a previous time when the community found the ‘ephodia’ sufficient. As a third motive force, Welborn suggests what he terms ‘the operation of an ideology that ascribed equal rights to youth’. Welborn has already identified the role of intellectual ferment as a contributory factor in the times he has identified as previous ferments of discord between the young and the old, and so he has a parallel for what he is claiming. In this context it is not the growth of philosophical positions which is important (Socrates's claim, for instance, that philosophy was a better guide to life than the advice of fathers and elders), but an engagement with the Pauline writings, which themselves say little about age as a qualification for leadership, and give plenty of encouragement to more democratic visions of leadership, for example, the image of the body in 1 Cor. xii. Welborn attempts to show how Clement seeks to undermine the democratic implications of Pauline texts by shifting their emphasis or simply making changes to them (see his use of the body in 1 Clem. 37 in contrast to 1 Cor. xii).

Welborn concludes with a brief epilogue in which he shows that Clement's attempt at quelling this rebellion of the young against the old was successful; and that it is appropriate that Irenaeus should quote him in attempting to justify the idea of succession of bishops. For Welborn this points to the truth of Harnack's observation that 1 Clement marks the beginning of the suppression of the democratic principles which appear central to Jesus and Paul.

This is an excellent book. Its originality lies not so much in the claim that it makes about the origin of the difficulties in Corinth and the motives which gave rise to them (as Welborn points out, others, including Lietzmann and Koester, have argued for the centrality of inter-generational dispute for an understanding of 1 Clement). Rather it lies rather in the systematic manner in which Welborn sets about the task, giving substantial support to the vague intimations of his scholarly predecessors, both through penetrating and thoughtful exegesis of 1 Clement and the application of a wide-ranging knowledge of relevant Graeco-Roman sources, which he uses to elucidate and substantiate his interpretation of 1 Clement. Welborn succeeds admirably in fulfilling the hermeneutical conditions that he sets himself, not least his assertion that a good solution to the problem of the origins of the conflict in 1 Clement should account for much of the epistle's content. Especially striking in this respect is the way that his thesis illuminates Clement's use of the Old Testament and his use of Paul's letters. In relation to the latter point, Welborn's book constitutes an important contribution to the ever-growing interest in the reception of Paul among early Christians.

The book may also explain the apparent absence from the epistle of matters of theological controversy. Disputants were not arguing about a particular issue of what might be termed doctrine, but rather about the question of governance and its nature. Some might argue that this is a theological issue and that, if Welborn is right, one would expect more engagement with the principles lying behind the dispute as we find in some of the Graeco-Roman sources. But for Welborn, in line with the principles of sumbouleutic discourse, explicit reference to such things are not expected and the argument about principles is inevitably implicit.

Much more could be said about this book – one wonders, for instance, if Welborn needed to say more about the trope of the young against the old as this manifests itself in Jewish writings, not least because of the importance of the Old Testament for Clement (Josephus is mentioned on occasion). What is clear is that this marks a major contribution to the discussion of 1 Clement. Moreover, in its insistence on the importance of generational conflict for an understanding of the epistle, it draws the attention of scholars to an understudied but potentially significant subject for our understanding of Christian identity as this expressed itself through theories of governance.