Excerpts from Theodotus 22.4

Clement of Alexandria · Excerpts from Theodotus · ca. 200 · Alexandria · Read in context

Summary: They say the angels were baptized for us so that we, bearing the Name, may pass the Limit into the Pleroma.

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Greek text · Stählin 3:114

»οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι« δέ, φασίν, »ὑπὲρ [ἡμῶν] τῶν νεκρῶν« οἱ ἄγγελοί εἰσιν οἱ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν βαπτιζόμενοι, ἵνα ἔχοντες καὶ ἡμεῖς τὸ ὄνομα μὴ ἐπισχεθῶμεν κωλυθέντες εἰς τὸ πλήρωμα παρελθεῖν τῷ Ὅρῳ καὶ τῷ Σταυρῷ.

English · Claude translation

“Those who are baptized for the dead,” they say, are the angels who are baptized for us, so that we too, having the Name, may not be held back and prevented by the Limit and the Cross from passing into the Pleroma.

About this passage

Source: Stählin 3:114 · 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.
Topics: Heresy, Baptism

Notes

Translation notes

Limit (Horos) and Cross (Stauros) are names of the Valentinian boundary of the Pleroma. The bracketed word in the Greek is the editor's deletion.

Cite this passage

Clement of Alexandria, Exc. 22.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-excerpta/22/4/).

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Plain text

Clement of Alexandria, Exc. 22.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/clement-excerpta/22/4/).

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