6 - Miscellany Titles and Clement’s Divine Paratexts

Summary

Clement’s title, Stromateis, is his most explicit genre marker; it is a miscellanistic cliché, by which he positions his work squarely within the culture of Classical miscellany- making. Classical miscellanists often invented clever titles and drew attention to them; on the surface, Clement’s Stromateis appears to be, by contrast, dull and prosaic. On closer inspection, we find that he uses his sequence of titles creatively to guide his readers into a deepening relation to God. Protrepticus and Paedagogus become scripturally authorised ways of figuring the Lord as the one who is addressing the reader, while Clement as author oscillates between accompanying his readers and sharing the Lord’s voice. In the Stromateis,Clement emphasises that the title is a miscellanistic cliché and does not endeavour to discover it in Scripture, but that in itself turns out to have significance. His point is that what is strewn (διεστρωμένα) is strewn in the world more widely than in Scripture, and the work has its telos in something that lies beyond the words on the page.