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bees were sometimes supposed to gather it from the upper air, and only
visit flowers for wax.1 In this circle of associations is the idea of honey
as a food of health and life,* and so of deathless life.* Apiculture was
practised,4 and bees were regarded, on the whole, as friendly creatures.5
But it cannot be said that anything in pagan literature ascribes to the
bee the character of universal benevolence that Clement assigns to it.
It is reminiscent of his characterization of the true ' gnostic '.* Finally,
the bee was regarded as dainty and virginal, abhorring alike unchastity7
and filth.8 Hence the appropriateness of the contrast drawn by Clement
between the bee and the carrion-worm, in the passage quoted. And
the association of the bee with knowledge, understanding, reason, and
inspiration, fits it to be the symbol of Truth, considered as an active
principle working in human life.
The passage in which Clement calls his teacher (Pantaenus seems to
be meant)9 a ' Sicilian bee ',10 is famous. It runs 2iA.ii} T om 19
/icAiTra, irpo<l>7]TiKov re xai aTroarokiKov Xci/xwos TO. avOrj Sptird/xevos
aKrjparov TI yvwo-ew: xpij/ia T<HS TCJV aKpotofiivtov iveyiwrjcr i/ai^ais."
Pantaenus, working as an exegete upon the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testament, culls from them the pure stuff of gnosis, as a bee wins
honey from the flowers, It is actually the principle of Truth in his
mind that is at work, but it is naturally identified with the man himself.
1
Robert-Tornow, pp. 75-79.
2
Roscher Nektar und Ambrosia c. IV a. Also V. Macchioro Napolt Memorte
vol. i, 1911, pp. 56 et seq, where the bee is described as a 'very ancient and
important symbolic manifestation of life'. And Bochart Hierozotcon vol. iii p. 370.
We note aurijpla ( = life) in the passage of Clement under discussion.
' Cook, p. 20.
4
Robert-Tornow, pp. 8, 9.
6
In spite of some stories of men and beasts being stung to death by bees (as see
Robert-Tornow, pp. 60, 61), the good aspect of bees is generally in view.
6
Compare Porphyry De antro Nympharum 18, where elect souls that live
righteously and return whence they came after fulfilling the will of heaven are
called fU\iaaat (Cook, p. 17).
7
Robert-Tornow, pp. 12-18.
8
Ibid. p. 14. And see Bochart Hteroeoicon vol. iii p. 355, quoting the mediaeval
Byzantine poet Phile on animals (drawn from classical sources) aJ ij iitv ayvov
, fj (Tcxpfj o\fb<iv 0ioy, aycvoros ovoa vtKpiitSiv onapayftaTWV.
9
Eusebius H. E. bk. vii c. xiii; compare bk. v c. xi.
10
Not an unprecedented phrase; see Suidas (Gaisford, col. 2627), s.v. Stvixpav
airrbt Si 'ATTIKJ) fitKirra ir<wo/tdfTo. Pindar, Fourth Pythian Ode 1. 106 calls the
priestess of the oracle iii\taaa A(\ipU; and the priestesses of Demeter were called
piXtoom. Aristophanes Birds 11. 7498" gives us iviai Sxntptl filKirra *(JWIXOJ
iuPpoaiav neKtaiv dir(0oaeTO Kapv&v, d(i (pipwv yKvxuai' <fbrp/rather specially close
in parallel to the passage under discussion.
11
Stromata bk. i c. i (vol. ii p. 9 11. 1-3). Dr A. B. Cook notes a reminiscence
of Euripides Hippolytus 11. 76 ff, the free-roaming bee culling pure honey from the
flowers of a virgin meadow.
170 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
whom the whole swarm of virtues belongs, accords well with y a\rj9aa
Sxnrtp r) fitkirra.
The character of the other passage' is perhaps less dubious. It is
about the vt'^os iiaprvptov in Heb. xii 1, which Clement understands to
be the same as the oyujvos vn-oSeiyfidrav 6(i(Dv mentioned earlier in the
same chapter. He qualifies the 'cloud' as ayiov KOI SutSh. The
second adjective indicates visualization. The holy souls, whose example
has been cited, are pictured as enveloping the living like a cloud. vs'd>os
and 07117V0S are both capable of meaning ' an indefinite great number'.
And it is reasonable to suppose that, in this passage, this figurative
sense applies either to both, or to neither. The use of the epithet
SieiSts shews that ve<os is used sensu proprio. And this gives a pre-
sumption that oTiiJvos is also used in its literal sense. The modern
reader would most readily think of the vi<f>os SiS as an invisible
crowd of human presences.2 But we are not justified in concluding
that Clement is doing that. The ancients continually appear to repre-
sent to themselves the immortal and bodiless state of the soul under
the symbolic form of a small flying creature.3 Clement seems to be
thinking on those lines when he applies to himself the phrase from
a lost work of Euripides, xpvo-eai 817 fioi mcpvyes irtpl V<OTU>,4 and prays
that Christ will grant him to wing his way to the heavenly city. It is
possible, therefore, that the vl<f>o<s (Mprvpwv is visualized by Clement as
a swarm of bees on the wing,6 of which vc'd>o; StctSc's is no inapt
description. The likelihood of this interpretation is greatly increased
by a fragment from a lost play of Sophocles, ftofifia Si veicpZv
1
Ibid, bk.' iv c. xvi (vol. ii p. 293 1. 20).
2
Mrs Oliphant's Beleaguered City is a classical expression of this form of thought,
which has its own long history of developement.
* Georg Weicker Der Seelenvogel; Vittorio Macchioro in Napoli Memorie delta
R. Accademia di Arckeologia, 1911, vol. i. On the Athenian white Lekythoi of the
fifth and fourth centuries B. c. souls are represented as tiny winged naked human
figures. A 'swarm' of such little souls are shewn on a vase depicting Hermes
bringing a dead woman to Charon's boat. They flit round the life-sized figures.
W. Riezler Weissgrundige Attische Lekythen, Plate 44. A. Fairbanks Athenian
White Lekythoi, New York, 1901, p. 307, describes a vase, no. 461 in Jena University
Museum, shewing little souls flitting out of a half-buried pithos, beneath the wand of
Hermes. It may represent the souls exercising their liberty to return to this world
on the Festival of Anthesteria, the first day of which was called Pithoigia. See
also R. Hirsch De animarum apud antiques imaginibus. Also s. v. Schmetterling
in Pauly-Wissowa, 2nd Series, vol. ii A, p. 571. And for bees as representing
souls, Cook, p. 23, and Robert-Tornow, pp. 134 flf.
* Stromata bk. iv c. xxvi (vol. ii p. 324 1. 19). Confirmed by Plutarch Morals ;
see A. Nauck Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Leipzig, 1889, P- 655.
B
See Vergil Georgics bk. iv I. 557 for description of bees issuing from a bull's
carcase as ' immensae nubes'.
174 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
Conclusion.
Honey, for Clement, symbolizes the sweet and profitable knowledge
of the Logos, which is to be culled from all over the varied garden of
the universe. The bee symbolizes the active principle of Truth in man,
which enables him to do this; or, by a derived use, it symbolizes
a ' gnostic' soul as actualizing this principle.
Because the sweets of the Logos are to be found everywhere, the
' gnostic' will be TTOXV/JMO^.*
It was this wide-ranging, industrious study that produced the Slro-
mata, which Clement presents to his readers as 'figs,olives, dried fruits,
honey, as from a fruitful field'.' And he himself is like a bee, gathering
divine sweets from all over the garden (by no means prim and orderly)
of his encyclopaedic knowledge.6
The bee-symbolism brings out vividly the fact that Clement, though
bearing so many of the marks of the mystic, differs from the more usual
mystic types. He knows nothing of any stillness save that of the
passions. He does not see the way to God in silence of the mind, in
1
Edn. E. Hauler, Leipzig, 1900, p. 112.
* i. e. to the Christian rite.
s
S. Eitrem Opferntus und Voropfer p. 107. Eitrem's remark shews conscious-
ness that it is a long step from any of the pagan uses of milk and honey cited by
Usener to the thing described by Tertullian.
4
Slromata bk. vi c. x (vol. ii p. 472 1. 25).
5
Ibid. bk. iv c. ii (vol. ii p. 250 I. 25).
Ibid. bk. vii c xviii (vol. iii p. 78 11. 23-29). With more limited scope the whole
idea is summed up in St Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture IX, quoting
Prov. vi 8 :' Go to the bee and learn how industrious she is; how hovering about
all kinds of flowers, she culls the honey for thy use, that thou also, ranging over Holy
Scripture, mayest lay hold on thy salvation, and being satisfied with it may say,
How sweet are thy words unto my taste; yea, sweeter than honey and the honey-
comb to my mouth.'
VOL. XXVIII. N
178 THE JOURNAL OF THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
ON L U K E xxii 17-20
THE ' various readings' in St Luke's description of the Last Supper
are of more than ordinary importance, because the clauses omitted by
some ancient authorities include the only injunction to repeat the
ceremony found outside St Paul's account, ' It is obvious that in this
matter, as in the somewhat similar case of the text of the Lord's Prayer,
ordinary canons of textual criticism should not be applied without
scrutiny : in the rest of the Gospels we may assume some measure of
ignorance on the part of scribes and therefore of dependence upon
the exemplar before them, but in the case of the Lord's Prayer and the
1
Words of Institution' the text must have been too familiar for merely
careless mistakes to be perpetuated and transmitted by whole groups
of MSS. To take the simplest instance, some Churches inserted
a Doxology at the end of the Lord's Prayer in St Matthew, some
omitted it. I can conceive an Ecclesiastical authority becoming
convinced that the Doxology should be omitted, or vice versa, but
I should be surprised if a scribe left it out by mere carelessness in
copying. The Canon of the greater probability of a longer (or shorter)
reading simply does not apply.
All the more therefore in these passages is it probable that we ought
to adopt the unconventional readingperhaps it would be better to
say the unliturgical reading. All our MSS, without exception, were
penned by Christians,1 many of them (I should suppose) by clergymen,
and the various readings actually found in these passages in ancient
groups of MSS must, I think, be explained by efforts to produce some-
thing which seemed to be more edifying and nearer the consensus
fidelium than the rival reading.
An obvious instance is afforded by the Peshitta text of Lk. xxii: no
one supposes that it was the result of mere accidents of transcription.
It is a nice question what text exactly may be supposed to have stood
before the editor, but whatever it was it must have been a text de-
scribing a ritual which it was difficult to reconcile with that in Mark
and Matthew on the one hand or the still more familiar words of
1
Cod. Bobiensis (*) is a possible exception, for the scribe seems not to have
known his Paternoster.