Scholarly Reflections
Young, Stephen E. "Chapter Four: Identifying Markers and Ways of Orality: The Explicit Appeal to Jesus Tradition in 1 Clement 13.1c-2." Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011, 107-150.
Young takes up 1 Clement 13.1c-2 as material to assess his theory of dependence. There is a strong parallel in Poly. Phil. 23, which he will evaluate in chaper five. He begins by evaluating evidence of the 1 Clement text's dependence on written sources, such as the Synoptic Gospels (Young 2011, 107). Young begins with a Greek text of the passage from 1 Clement. The material is centered around seven statements, attributed to Jesus (Young 2011, 108-110). Young provides cross references to similar or identical statements in the Synoptic Gospels and elsewhere.
Because of the date of 1 Clement sometime between A.D. 70 and 100, it is very unlikely the parallels other than those in the Synoptic Gospels would have been available to Clement (Young 2011, 111). The Gospels, however, were written approximately at the same time as 1 Clement. Young therefore searches for signs of dependence (Young 2011, 112).
Young observes that the sayings in 1 Clement 13.2 do not have a direct, verbatim parallel in the Synoptic Gospels (Young 2011, 113). The ideas do have parallels, but the cluster of ideas is not found in any proximity or in a similar order in a Synoptic Gospel.
Young goes on to look for suggestions that Clement was influenced by material which may ahve been used in the redactional process, presumably by Matthew or Luke, depending on Mark. Again, young cannot find even a hint of the texts being strongly parallel the closest he can come is to note the ideas were relatively common in Judean thought (Young 2011, 116).
Young continues by considering possible parallels for the passage and what scholarship has said of the possible sources of those parallels. In other words, if the Synoptic Gospels seem to have depended on a Q-source, Young would like to explore the nature of that dependence (Young 2011, 120). The statements present in Mark are rather far apart. Those contained in Matthew and Luke are in passages often considered to be Q material, and in Luke all the parallels are in Luke 6:31, 36-38 (Young 2011, 121). This suggests to Young that Luke was here not drawing on Q, as there is material unique to Luke, but that he was using a block of material, probably from an oral source (Young 2011, 122). Young continues by describing the markers which suggest this. Much of the argument is based on the thesis that Matthew's Sermon on the Mount and Luke's Sermon on th ePlain are the same event adapted by the authors from a Q narrative (Young 2011, 123-127). Regardless, while Luke seems to know the cluster of ideas as a cluster, Matthew does not seem to do so.
Young describes the oral structure of the passage in detail (Young 2011, 137-138). He notes the qualities of euphony and balance which are clearly present. Oddly absent from his argument is the fact that, on its face, the material is presented as part of a sermon, which would presuppose a carefully ordered oral structure.
Young next moves back to his oraiginal discussion of the similarity between Luke 6:36-38 and 1 Clement 13.2. While he does not find a compelling case for a liteary dependence, he does consider the material to be significantly simlar (Young 2011, 140). Yet Young observes that the material serves a different purpose in 1 Clement than in Luke. Clement's use of the passive responses suggests that Clement is instructing Christians in how to live so as to receive good treatment by God, while in Luke the goal is to receive good treatment from humans (Young 2011, 143-144).
Young concludes that, although evidence for linguistic identity is lacking, this is normally the case in oral studies. Speakers often work on the level of ideas, not workds. For this reason, he takes the influence on 1 Clement 13.2 to be an oral source which also likely influenced the passage in Luke 6 (Young 2011, 146).