About the Book

The individual contributions to this volume analyze the argumentation strategies employed in 1 Clement, with a focus on cultural knowledge, use of Scripture, insights from interdisciplinary approaches, and the reception of the author's argumentation throughout history.

Book Synopsis

This volume explores the significance of 1 Clement as an argumentative text - a text that substantiates and offers reasons for a specific course of action which readers of the work should take. The contributions to this volume analyze the various argumentative strategies the author of 1 Clement employs in service of the letter's overall aims. Some essays focus on the cultural knowledge underlying the argumentation, while others on the function and use of Scripture. Several essays offer insights from other disciplines - theories of argumentation, metaphor, and (literary and cultural) space, as well as historical anthropology - to facilitate the analysis of 1 Clement's argument. The final two essays investigate the way the argumentative structure of 1 Clement was interpreted and used in two very different contexts of reception.

About the Author

Jacob N. Cerone is a doctoral candidate in New Testament at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He is an in-house editor of the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (de Gruyter, Berlin), Series Editor of Classic Studies on the Apostolic Fathers (Pickwick), and Series Editor of Patristic Essentials (Fontes Press). He is also a coeditor of the Apostolic Fathers Greek Reader (GlossaHouse) and Daily Scriptures (Eerdmans)

David du Toit is Professor of New Testament (History and Literature of Early Christianity) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. He was awarded a doctoral degree (1996: Theios Anthropos. Zur Verwendung von θεῖος ἄνθρωπος und sinnverwandten Ausdrücken in der Literatur der Kaiserzeit, published 1997) as well as a Habilitation (2006: Der abwesende Herr. Narrative und geschichtstheologische Strategien im Markusevangelium zur Bewältigung der Abwesenheit des Auferstandenen) by the Humboldt University of Berlin. He is editor of the series WMANT and FoSub. His main research interests include early Christology, the Gospel of Mark, Early Christianity and Greco-Roman culture, semantics and lexicography of early Christian Greek, methodology in Historical-Jesus-research.

Kathrin Hager is a doctoral candidate at the chair for New Testament at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and is pastor in the Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchengemeinde Eckenhaid. From 2017-2023 she was an assistant to the chair of New Testament, first at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and then at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität. Her dissertation project focuses on the foundation of ethics in 1 Clement.