Study of the so-called Apostolic Fathers has, by and large, been intermittent, certainly when compared to study of the books of the New Testament. And yet, as Clare Rothschild indicates in this new collection of fourteen essays, all of which bar two are published here for the first time, their content presents the interested reader with much to stimulate.
The designation ‘Apostolic Fathers’ is a comparatively recent one, going back to the mid- to later part of the sixteenth century. Building upon David Lincicum's intriguing claim that the designation arose from a desire on the part of booksellers to shorten the name of an originally longer title for the collection of these works made by J.-B. Cotelier in 1672, Rothschild argues that such an abbreviation should in fact be attributed to the habits of librarians in this period, one of whom was in fact Cotelier himself. The essay presents the reader with a range of interesting evidence about librarians, booksellers and the book trade more generally in the relevant period.
The next five essays concern themselves with 1 Clement. Rothschild deals with a range of subjects. In her essay on the of reception of 1 Corinthians in the epistle, she argues forcefully for the all-pervasive presence of Paul's letter (possibly suggested by 1 Clement 47.1) and highlights what she terms the ‘inter-textual re-writing’ that such reception evidences, leading to iterations of as well as critical engagement with the former. In the next essay, on 1 Clement as a pseudepigraphon (echoing the title of her book on Hebrews of 2014), she argues that the epistle should not be seen as a text written by an author called Clement from Rome to a community in Corinth – rather these designations in the epigraph of the epistle are theological, ‘characterizing the sender(s) as proto-orthodox and the addressees as schismatics’. More specific essays follow on ‘paideia’ in 1 Clement (here to be understood as punishment or disciplining, as opposed to education), on the interpretation of the Golden Calf incident in 1 Clement 53 (Rothschild claims that in its positive highlighting of Moses's actions following the event, it reflects a specifically Marcionite interpretation, and is one part of an argument that claims the text to be subtly anti-Marcionite), and on the Phoenix legend in 1 Clement 25 (again Marcion is seen as lying in the background as Rothschild shows how Clement's adaptation of the legend highlights the importance of resurrection and divine rebirth in anti-Marcionite ways).
Three essays on 2 Clement follow. One argues for a new translation of the somewhat cumbersome opening two verses of the epistle in such a way as to take account of James Kelhoffer's view that the author conceives of the relationship between Christ and the believer in terms of a patron-client relationship. This means, for instance, that 1.2c should be translated: ‘Correspondingly, we must not undervalue our salvation.’ Another essay examines 2 Clement 2.1–7 and its use of Isaiah liv.1. Taking account of the history of interpretation of this text in a number of ancient Christian sources, including Galatians iv.21–v.1, Justin, Tertullian and Marcion, Rothschild argues, contra some, that 2 Clement's use should be understood as exhorting the proto-orthodox not to desert to Marcion's rival Church. The final essay in this section investigates the use of the metaphor of the race and sailing in 2 Clement 7, arguing for a Virgilian background which extends the idea of the client-patron relationship.
The essays which follow deal with passages or subjects connected with the Martyrdom of Polycarp (an investigation of the background to the famous Quintus incident, here seen fascinatingly against the background of ideas of masculinity in the Second Sophistic), the Didache (an investigation of the background to Didache 12.1–5), Barnabas (an attempt to investigate the character and nature of Barnabas's allegory and its relationship to ideas of secession from Judaism), Diognetus (an attempt to contextualise the epistle's engagement of the topos of the invisible God in relation to a particular ‘moral map’), and finally Hermas (an examination of the medical background of the idea of irascibility in Mandates 5.1.3).
The collection is marked by careful and inventive reading of the primary literature (Rothschild is a fascinating reader of texts), by critical engagement with a range of secondary material, and an array of fresh insights, often informed by Rothschild's wide-ranging knowledge of Graeco-Roman sources (notable in this respect are her essays on the Phoenix and irascibility in Hermas, the latter being notable for its fruitful engagement with Galen). As with many collections of essays, this is a medley of studies which is united at the most general level (the study of the so-called Apostolic Fathers) but this need not be seen as a problem. What the essays succeed in doing, not least through the freshness of many of their insights and the interesting primary literature that they bring to bear on the study of these strangely understudied texts, is showing how much more fruitful scholarly work can be done on these texts. Some themes might be said to emerge, however – the importance for any understanding of 2 Clement of the idea of the patron-client relationship; and, more controversially, the significance of Marcion for an understanding of some of the Apostolic Fathers, not least 1 and 2 Clement. I found myself much less persuaded by the latter claim. While Rothschild is not a pan-Marcionite in the way that Markus Vinzent is, some of her assertions in this area seemed to be predicated upon fragile evidence and to depend upon a multiplication of hypotheses (to accept her view on the anti-Marcionite tendencies of 1 Clement 25 and the interpretation of the Phoenix, you needed perhaps to have accepted what she had already argued about 1 Clement 53). I also wondered whether both in relation to the apparently anti-Marcionite background of 1 Clement and to Rothschild's claims about the role of 1 Corinthians in the same epistle, more could have been made of that text's interest in the Christian Old Testament. The matter is important in different ways for both subjects (see especially 1 Clement 45.2, which could have been exploited by Rothschild to bolster her anti-Marcionite case). The claim that 1 Clement is a Pseudepigraphon could be said to raise as many problems as it apparently solves, not least relating to the kind of specificity given to the letter by its unknown author(s), a specificity which raises just the kind of questions about the significance of Rome as a centre of ‘proto-orthodoxy’, which, in Rothschild's view, is raised by the assumption of ‘Roman’ authority if the letter is not considered pseudonymous.
Other observations could be made (for instance, does Rothschild's reading of Barnabas's allegorical hermeneutic as tempering a straightforwardly supersessionist account risk making him more of a theoretical hermeneut rather than a man concerned with the actuality of Jewish-Christian interaction? The two things may not be mutually exclusive but the issue of balance is raised). But it would be wrong to end with criticisms. This is a rich collection of essays, from which those interested in the Apostolic Fathers will learn a great deal, whether in agreement or disagreement.
