A NOTE ON THIS RENDERING

THE WITNESS — A LETTER, NOT A PROPHET

This volume is unlike every other on this shelf. It is not a book of the Hebrew Scriptures rendered from the Greek; it is a LETTER, written in Greek from the assembly at Rome to the assembly at Corinth about the year 95, while men who had seen the Shilachim were still alive. There is no Hebrew Vorlage behind it and therefore NO SUPPLY RULE APPLIES: nothing has been lost from a Hebrew original, because there never was one. Sixty-five chapters, 398 verses. WHY IT STANDS ON THIS SHELF Because the fifth-century CODEX ALEXANDRINUS binds it with the Scriptures, after the Revelation, as part of one book. That is the same manuscript whose variant readings Brenton prints in his appendix — and whose text of Yechezkel 33:25–26 independently confirmed a supply this House had already made from the Hebrew. A canon that includes what the assemblies actually read cannot easily exclude a letter they read aloud in worship for three centuries. THE ENGLISH, AND AN HONEST ACCOUNT OF IT The English body of this volume was taken from a spoken-word recording of the epistle, transcribed by machine, and the underlying translation is that of Charles Hoole (1885), which is in the public domain. THE HOUSE SAYS THIS PLAINLY BECAUSE IT MATTERS. A machine hearing an archaic English narration makes predictable errors, and they were corrected here: sojourneth had become 'sjouth', unerring had become 'unairring', presbyters had become 'presbbiters', Corinth had become 'Corenth', and the two men who carry the letter home in the last chapter — Claudius Ephebus and Valerius Bito — had been reduced to nonsense. Every proper name in this volume was checked against the Greek. A reader who finds a further slip should report it; this text has not had the centuries of proofing that Brenton has. THE VERSIFICATION — RESTORED FROM THE GREEK The recording gave chapters only, with no verses at all. The verse divisions printed here were restored by setting the English against the GREEK TEXT OF LAKE, chapter by chapter, and dividing each chapter at its sentence-joints into the number of verses the Greek carries. The count therefore agrees with the standard Greek versification — 65 chapters, 399 verses — in every chapter but one: chapter nine, where the narrator did not speak the chapter-number aloud, and the seam had to be found by hand; it stands at three verses where the Greek has four. THIS IS AN ALIGNMENT, NOT A COLLATION, and the House does not pretend otherwise. Where a verse-boundary here falls a clause away from where a Greek edition sets it, the Greek is right. CHAPTER 16 — CLEMENT QUOTES THE SEPTUAGINT, AND IT SETTLES SOMETHING This is why the volume was built. At chapter sixteen Clement quotes THE WHOLE OF YESHAYAHU 53 — the longest single citation of Scripture in the Apostolic Fathers — and he quotes it FROM THE GREEK. He writes that the Servant is AS A ROOT IN A THIRSTY LAND, and that there is no form nor glory in him. Set this beside the Yeshayahu volume on this shelf and the readings answer each other. Here is a witness writing while the Second Temple's ruins were still smoking, who had no Masoretic text to consult because none yet existed, quoting the Septuagint as Scripture without argument or apology. The Vorlage Doctrine of this House is usually argued from within the canon. THIS IS THE SAME ARGUMENT MADE FROM OUTSIDE IT, BY SOMEONE WHO WAS THERE. THE PRAYER, AND THE LEAF THAT WAS LOST Chapters 59 to 61 carry one of the oldest Christian prayers that survives anywhere. For eighteen centuries nobody could read it: Codex Alexandrinus has a leaf missing at exactly that point, and every edition printed before 1875 simply stops short — which is why old reprints of this epistle run to fifty-nine chapters instead of sixty-five. The prayer was recovered when Philotheus Bryennius found a complete manuscript in the library of the Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople in 1873 and published it in 1875. The text in this volume is a complete one, and the prayer stands. THE PHOENIX — CHAPTER 25 Clement argues the resurrection from the bird of Arabia that dies and rises from its own decay. The House does not remove it, does not soften it, and does not defend it. PHOENIX is left standing in its own dress, on the same pattern by which Tannin stands in Bel and Heosphoros in Yeshayahu 14. Rule X.4 governs: what the writer wrote is what the page carries, and the reader may weigh the argument for himself as the Corinthians were expected to. THE SHILACHIM AND THE ZEKENIM

The letter's whole occasion is that a few men at Corinth deposed their elders without cause. Clement answers with the orders the Shilachim appointed, and with Korach against Moshe and Aharon as the pattern of what sedition is. The House renders ekklesia as KEHILLAH throughout, apostoloi as SHILACHIM, presbyteroi as ZEKENIM, and archiereus as KOHEN GADOL — the last of these because Clement applies it to Yeshua HaMashiach at 36:1 and again at 61:3, and the Hebrew title is what he means by it. THE TONGUE YAHUAH stands for the divine Lord and is never glossed. Yeshua HaMashiach stands where the Greek has Iesous Christos, and Adoneinu Yeshua HaMashiach where it has ho kyrios hemon. The fathers Clement names stand in the House manner — Chanoch, Noach, Avraham, Yitzchak, Ya'akov, Moshe, Aharon, Miryam, Korach, Yehoshua, Rachav, David, Iyov, Eliyahu, Elisha, Yechezkel, Yehudit, Ester — and the two Shilachim who died at Rome stand as KEFA and SHA'UL. Corinth and Rome keep their own names, being neither Hebrew nor to be made so. Forty-eight terms take the green gloss at first appearance and stand bare thereafter. RULE X.4 The text is rendered as it stands. The sedition is not softened, nor the rebuke of it, nor the phoenix, nor the passage where Clement tells the seditious to depart from the congregation and go where they will if only the flock of Mashiach may be at peace. Interpretation belongs to this note. The letter keeps its own voice — and its voice is the voice of the assembly at Rome, one generation after the Shilachim, which is precisely why it is worth hearing.