Sophia Scriptura

Prophetic Extracts 46.1

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

Summary: Passions are called “spirits” by their tendency, not their substance.

Greek text · Stählin 3:149

»Πνεύματα·« λέγεται τὰ πάθη τὰ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ οὐκ ἐξ οὐσίας πνεύματα, ἐπεὶ ἔσται ἐμπαθὴς ἄνθρωπος λεγεὼν δαιμόνων, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν [προ]τροπήν.

English · Claude translation

“Spirits”: the passions in the soul are called spirits, not spirits by substance, since then the passionate man would be a legion of demons, but by their tendency.

About this passage

Source
Stählin 3:149 · 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).
Scripture
Topics
Ethics

Notes

Translation notes

  • The “legion” recalls Mark 5:9. The bracketed letters in the Greek are the editor's deletion.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 46.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/46/1/).

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Plain text
Clement of Alexandria, Ecl. 46.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-eclogae/46/1/).

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