Sophia Scriptura

Prophetic Extracts 27.5

Clement of Alexandria · Prophetic Extracts · ca. 200 · Alexandria · Read in context

Summary: Like a magnet drawing only iron, books draw only readers who can understand them.

Greek text · Stählin 3:145

καθάπερ οὖν ἡ μαγνῆτις λίθος τὴν ἄλλην ὕλην παραπεμπομένη μόνον ἐφέλκεται διʼ ἐπιτηδειότητα τὸν σίδηρον, οὕτως καὶ τὰ βιβλία πολλῶν ὄντων τῶν ἐντυγχανόντων τοὺς οἵους τε συνιέναι μόνους ἐπισπᾶται.

English · Claude translation

Just as the magnet, passing over other material, attracts only iron because of its fitness, so books too, though they have many readers, draw only those able to understand.

About this passage

Source
Stählin 3:145 · Otto Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 3, Stromata Buch VII und VIII, Excerpta ex Theodoto, Eclogae propheticae, Quis dives salvetur, Fragmente, GCS 17 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1909) · Greek text: Otto Stählin, Clemens Alexandrinus 3 (GCS 17, 1909), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0
Text
As printed in Stählin, GCS 17. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.
Translation
Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Stählin (1909); made independently of existing English translations.
Compare
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 8 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Printed there under the wrong title “Excerpts of Theodotus”, and incomplete (it breaks off in ch. 63).
Topics
Scripture and canon

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 27.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/27/5/).

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Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 27.5 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/27/5/).

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