Convergent Views

Historical source reader

The First Epistle of Clement

A complete chapter-based reading edition of an early Christian letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth.

How this is being presented: as a noncanonical historical source. The complete letter supplies context; three passages are indexed to claims in the Minimal Facts evidence outline.

Lightfoot–Harmer, 1891 · Public domain ·

Contents
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    Edition record

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    Translation

    J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, edited and completed by J. R. Harmer (Macmillan, 1891). Public domain in the United States.

    Transcription

    Early Christian Writings, preserving its section labels. Presentation markup was removed, whitespace normalized, and readable modern spelling retained.

    Printed witness

    Exact 1891 Lightfoot–Harmer scan, printed pp. 57–85. Substantive corrections are recorded in the data rather than silently changed.

    Limits

    This is a readable historical translation, not a new critical Greek edition. Attribution to Clement and the letter’s exact date remain historical questions; the letter itself speaks in the name of the Roman church.

    Editorial and verification record

    The machine-readable edition contains 65 chapters and 393 numbered sections, plus the salutation. Its collation was independently reproduced on September 19, 2026: all 195 OCR/alignment candidates and all 28 listed corrections were reviewed against the scan, with zero unresolved items. The dated source snapshot, OCR, alignment output, hashes, and review ledgers are retained. Spelling modernization is retained. The three evidence-linked passages are also checked against the reviewed local transcriptions and narration metadata.

    Open the edition data · Read the collation record · Minimal Facts text and audio credits

    Reference this edition

    Suggested citation

    Clement of Rome. The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. Translated by J. B. Lightfoot, in The Apostolic Fathers, edited and completed by J. R. Harmer (London: Macmillan, 1891), 57–85. Convergent Views reading edition; collation independently reproduced September 19, 2026. https://convergentviews.com/projects/historical-sources/first-clement/