But now I see that Clement, a man who was a direct acquaintance of Paul,
We have
zero evidence that the Clement spoken of in Philippians is the same man who wrote the epistle Nathan abuses. "Clement" was a very popular male name.
Some things to consider....
+ The Clement who wrote the epistle NEVER mentions knowing Paul or even meeting him. odd since it would give him credence.
+ Nathan's speculation is not unique BUT the first time this guess was made was more than a century after these men died by one who could not have known if they were the same guy.
+ The Catholic Church (who believes Clement is an early pope of their church and a saint), do not hold he is the same guy as Paul mentions.
When I was a teen, I had a surfing buddy named "Donnie." If I wrote,"I used to surf with Donny" he'd make a foundational point of insisting I knew Donald Trump. That's about as silly as this gets.
reverences the book of Judith as if on the same level as Esther
As Nathan (oddly) chose to prove, Clement did neither. He mentions two women.... he says nothing about the books of Judith or Esther. And he certainly doesn't say that both books are the inerrant, fully canonical, divinely-inscripturated words of God and there must be an international law to mandate that all publishing houses include all the books mentioned in Article 6 of the 39 Articles in every tome with "BIBLE" written on the cover - all those books and nothing but those books.
Consider: If I posted "Abraham Lincoln was tall" that would NOT mean I ergo am speaking not of a man but of a book by that name (there are several books with the moniker of "Abraham Lincoln" or "A.Lincoln" or "Lincoln" - none of which are the man). Clearly, in the snippet Nathan offers, the author is speaking of two
ladies in the same breath. TWO CHAPTERS earlier he mentions "Sacred Scripture" but that's not "in the same breath" as he claims, it's TWO CHAPTERS earlier. Where Esther and Judith are mentioned, he is obviously speaking of women, of people - not books. And as Nathan proved, he says nothing about anything being "on the same level" to Nathan doesn't say.
I would be hard pressed to say Roman Catholicism is responsible for these additional writings
Roman Catholicism is not responsible for the BOOKS of Clement, Esther or Judith. The RCC is not the issue here. And actually, the set of books Nathan insists upon is the Bible of the CHURCH OF ENGLAND (not the Catholic Church) as declared in 1536, the 1611 edition of the King James Version Bible - the unique bible of the Church of England, quite different than that of the Catholic Church.
- Josiah
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