believe and to emulate God’s goodness (10.4), just as Josephus had claimed
that Judaism teaches participation in God’s virtue (A.J.1.23).
With Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus,we see the complete
“nativization” in Christian circles of aggressive philosophical protreptic.
Clement knew of Josephus’s work (Strom.1.21.147) but clearly relies on his
own learning for Protrepticus.It is a much more rambling, detailed, and
anecdotal treatise than Contra Apionem,and Clement feels little need to
include as much refutation of slander as Josephus. Clement takes the offen-
sive throughout. Still, we are in the same kind of literary world: he writes
for benevolent Gentile readers who are willing to tolerate a sustained attack
on their native traditions.
After a proleptic synkrisisthat contrasts popular Greek with Christian
views (1), Clement writes four chapters (2–5) in which he savagely ridicules
common notions of the gods and their activities, along with the gullibility
and superstition of the masses. Included among his targets are also the
most popular philosophical positions (5). Like Josephus, Clement allows that
the better philosophers long ago taught the truth, but they derived their
knowledge from the Hebrew Scriptures (6.60p), which are the best source
of (Christian) truth (8–9).
Having made his theoretical case, in the final three chapters (10–12)
Clement draws out the practical consequence that, knowing now the only
true source of knowledge and happiness, his readers ought to convert to
Christianity. This section is particularly interesting in social terms because,
like Josephus with the story of Adiabene, Clement faces head-on the social
obstacles to conversion. He must show that the benefit is great enough to
warrant the overthrow of the universal principle, “It is not proper to over-
throw a way of life (ethos) passed down to us from our ancestors” (10.72p;
cf. C.Ap.2.144). Clement closes with repeated appeals to choose life over
death.
Contra Apionem aslogos protreptikos These three examples are obvi-
ously different in setting, length, and internal structure (dialogue or dis-
course, autobiographical or abstract), as were also the examples considered
by Jordan. But they suffice to confirm the vitality of philosophical protrep-
tic during the century following Josephus. They also show that the genre
was so well known that it could be used subversively, to draw people away
from traditional philosophy and into Christian groups that now under-
stood themselves as philosophies. But one might reasonably ask whether
the widespread Christian employment of this genre, once Christianity was
conceived along philosophical lines, had not been anticipated by Judean
authors who, similarly, considered Judaism to be a philosophy.
TheContra Apionemin Social and Literary Context 171