The Ninevites as the Capstone of 1 Clement: Classical Greek Rhetoric and Early Christian Salvation

Quick Facts

Text: 1 Clement 7, a letter from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, usually dated to around 95–96 A.D.

Question: Is the Ninevite example (7.7) the rhetorical climax of 1 Clement 7?

Core finding: Yes. 7.7 is the last and fullest example, it closes two verbal rings opened in 7.4, and it is the only example in the chapter that names how salvation was received: “by supplicating” (ἱκετεύσαντες).

Clement’s habit: In eight of the ten lists of examples in 1 Clement, the fullest example comes last.

Type of rhetoric: Deliberative (persuasion to a course of action), in which examples serve as proofs (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.9.40).

Wider pattern: Supplication vocabulary (ἱκετεύω, ἱκέτης, ἱκεσία) occurs at 2.3, 7.7, 9.1, 48.1 and 59.2: the opening, the climax of chapter 7, its application, the remedy for the schism and the closing prayer.

Key texts: 1 Clement 2.3, 7.4–7, 8.2–5, 9.1, 18.2, 24–26, 48.1, 51–53, 57.1, 59.2–60.1 and 62.2; Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.9.40; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 9.4.23.

The Ninevites as the Capstone of 1 Clement 7: A Rhetorical Analysis

1 Clement 7 ends with two examples of repentance: Noah, whose hearers obeyed and were saved (7.6), and the Ninevites, who repented, obtained God’s mercy by supplicating him, and received salvation (7.7). In this article I will show that 1 Clement 7 follows the conventions of classical Greek rhetoric, and that, by those conventions, the Ninevite example expresses the clearest view of soteriology (how salvation is received) held by the writers of 1 Clement.

1. 1 Clement Is Deliberative Rhetoric, and Examples Are Its Proofs

Ancient rhetoric distinguished three kinds of speech: forensic (accusing or defending), epideictic (praising or blaming), and deliberative (urging a course of action). 1 Clement is deliberative. It urges the Corinthians to end their sedition, restore their presbyters and return to peace. Odd Magne Bakke’s rhetorical study of the letter, Concord and Peace (2001), reads it in exactly these terms.

Aristotle explains why examples carry so much weight in this kind of speech:

“Examples are most suitable for deliberative speakers, for it is by examination of the past that we divine and judge the future.” (Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.9.40, trans. Freese)

In Greek: τὰ δὲ παραδείγματα τοῖς συμβουλευτικοῖς (ἐκ γὰρ τῶν προγεγονότων τὰ μέλλοντα καταμαντευόμενοι κρίνομεν).

Clement’s examples are therefore not illustrations added to an argument. They are the argument. When he wants the Corinthians to know what repentance does, he proves it from what happened to Noah’s hearers and to Nineveh. Bakke reports W. Jaeger’s judgement that Clement’s “method of argumentation, i.e. proof by accumulated examples, is taken from current rhetorical practice and from rhetorical handbooks” (Bakke, p. 8).

Bakke also divides the letter into the standard parts of a speech: the opening (exordium, 1.1–2.8), the statement of the situation (narratio, 3.1–4), the proofs (probatio, 4.1–61.3) and the closing (peroratio, 62.1–64.1). Chapter 7 belongs to the proofs.

2. How Clement Orders His Examples

1 Clement contains ten lists of examples (series of people or signs used as proofs). Measured in Greek words (including the Scripture each example quotes), they show a clear habit:

Chapter 4 (jealousy): Cain 134, Jacob 13, Joseph 10, Moses 35, Aaron and Miriam 9, Dathan and Abiram 18, David 17. The fullest example comes first.

Chapter 5 (the apostles): Peter 23, Paul 61. The fullest example comes last.

Chapter 7 (repentance): Noah 7, the Ninevites 23. The fullest example comes last.

Chapters 9–12 (obedience, faith and hospitality): Enoch 13, Noah 24, Abraham 245, Lot 85, Rahab 213. The fullest example is in the middle; the last is the second fullest.

Chapters 17–18 (humility): the prophets 31, Abraham 23, Job 35, Moses 59, David 292. The fullest example comes last.

Chapters 24–25 (signs of the resurrection): day and night 17, the seed 51, the phoenix 130. The fullest example comes last.

Chapter 31 (the patriarchs): Abraham 14, Isaac 9, Jacob 22. The fullest example comes last.

Chapter 45 (the persecuted righteous): Daniel 14, the three young men 78. The fullest example comes last.

Chapter 51 (the rebels): Dathan and Abiram 38, Pharaoh and his army 53. The fullest example comes last.

Chapter 55 (self-sacrifice): kings and leaders 36, Judith 44, Esther 46. The fullest example comes last.

In eight of the ten lists, Clement saves his fullest example for the end. Chapter 7 follows this habit: the Ninevite example is more than three times the length of Noah’s. (Chapter 20, a description of the order of creation, is a catalogue of nature rather than a list of examples, and is not counted.)

The closest parallel is chapters 24–26. There Clement gives three signs of the resurrection in rising order, ends with the fullest (the phoenix), and then draws his conclusion with “therefore” (οὖν, 26.1) and confirms it from Scripture (26.2–3). Chapters 7–9 have the same shape: examples rising to Nineveh (7.6–7), the testimony of Scripture (chapter 8), and the conclusion with “therefore” (Διό, 9.1).

3. The Structure of 1 Clement 7

The chapter moves through the standard parts of a deliberative appeal:

Exhortation (7.1–3). The writers place themselves alongside their readers (“we are in the same arena”) and call them to “the glorious and venerable rule of our tradition”, using a three-part rhetorical series (a tricolon): τί καλὸν καὶ τί τερπνὸν καὶ τί προσδεκτόν, “what is good, and what is pleasing, and what is acceptable” (7.3).

Ground (7.4). The blood of Christ, “shed for our salvation” (διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν), brought “to the whole world” (παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ) “the grace of repentance”.

Thesis (7.5). “In generation after generation the Master has given a place of repentance to those willing to turn to him.”

Proofs (7.6–7). Two examples drawn from those generations, Noah and Nineveh.

4. Why 7.7 Is the Climax

End position and amplification. The Noah example is a single short clause:

Νῶε ἐκήρυξεν μετάνοιαν, καὶ οἱ ὑπακούσαντες ἐσώθησαν. “Noah preached repentance, and they that obeyed were saved.” (7.6)

The Ninevite example is expanded with a cause, a means, a result and a concession:

Ἰωνᾶς Νινευίταις καταστροφὴν ἐκήρυξεν, οἱ δὲ μετανοήσαντες ἐπὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν αὐτῶν ἐξιλάσαντο τὸν Θεὸν ἱκετεύσαντες καὶ ἔλαβον σωτηρίαν, καίπερ ἀλλότριοι τοῦ Θεοῦ ὄντες. “Jonah preached destruction unto the men of Nineveh; but they, repenting of their sins, obtained pardon of God by their supplications and received salvation, albeit they were aliens from God.” (7.7)

Placing the fuller, weightier example last is the pattern Clement uses throughout the letter (section 2).

Antithesis and an argument from the harder case. The two examples are built in parallel with one decisive difference. Noah “preached repentance” (ἐκήρυξεν μετάνοιαν); Jonah “preached destruction” (καταστροφὴν ἐκήρυξεν). Noah’s hearers were offered repentance and took it. The Ninevites were offered nothing but judgement, and still obtained salvation by repenting and supplicating. The second example therefore proves the thesis of 7.5 in its strongest form: even where only destruction is announced, the place of repentance is open.

A rising sentence. Quintilian teaches that a sentence should not weaken toward its end: “we must take care that our style does not diminish in force … for sentences rise and grow in force” (Institutio Oratoria 9.4.23, trans. Butler). 7.7 rises in exactly this way, through four steps:

μετανοήσαντες, “having repented” → ἐξιλάσαντο τὸν Θεὸν ἱκετεύσαντες, “they obtained God’s mercy by supplicating” → ἔλαβον σωτηρίαν, “they received salvation” → καίπερ ἀλλότριοι τοῦ Θεοῦ ὄντες, “although they were strangers to God”.

The last step is the strongest: the people who received salvation were outsiders to God altogether.

Ring composition. 7.7 closes two rings opened in 7.4. The blood was shed “for our salvation” (σωτηρίαν), and the Ninevites “received salvation” (σωτηρίαν). The blood brought repentance “to the whole world” (παντὶ τῷ κόσμῳ), and the Ninevites, “strangers to God”, show how far that reaches. The chapter ends by answering the claims with which its argument began.

The only example that names the means. Noah’s hearers “were saved” (ἐσώθησαν), with no means stated. The Ninevites “obtained God’s mercy by supplicating” (ἐξιλάσαντο … ἱκετεύσαντες): the participle names how. 7.7 is the only place in the chapter where Clement says how the salvation of 7.4 is received.

5. How the Argument Continues: Chapter 8 and 9.1

Chapter 8 adds the testimony of the prophets on repentance (Ezekiel and Isaiah) and concludes: “Desiring therefore that all his beloved should be partakers of repentance, he confirmed it by his almighty will” (8.5).

9.1 then draws the practical conclusion with “therefore” (Διό), the usual way deliberative rhetoric turns proof into exhortation:

Διὸ ὑπακούσωμεν τῇ μεγαλοπρεπεῖ καὶ ἐνδόξῳ βουλήσει αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἱκέται γενόμενοι τοῦ ἐλέους καὶ τῆς χρηστότητος αὐτοῦ προσπέσωμεν καὶ ἐπιστρέψωμεν ἐπὶ τοὺς οἰκτιρμοὺς αὐτοῦ… “Therefore let us obey his magnificent and glorious will, and, becoming suppliants (ἱκέται) of his mercy and goodness, let us fall down before him and turn to his compassions.”

The application uses the vocabulary of 7.7: ἱκέται, “suppliants”, is the noun of the verb ἱκετεύσαντες. Clement asks his readers to do what the Ninevites did. The same pairing of supplication with God becoming merciful appears again in 2.3 and 48.1.

6. Supplication Across the Whole Letter

The Ninevite pattern is not confined to chapter 7. The vocabulary of supplication (ἱκετεύω, “supplicate”; ἱκέτης, “suppliant”; ἱκεσία, “supplication”) appears five times in 1 Clement, and each time it falls at a structural point of the letter:

The opening (2.3). ἐξετείνετε τὰς χεῖρας ὑμῶν πρὸς τὸν παντοκράτορα θεόν, ἱκετεύοντες αὐτὸν ἵλεων γενέσθαι, εἴ τι ἄκοντες ἡμάρτετε. “You stretched out your hands to the Almighty God, supplicating him to be merciful, if you had sinned in anything unwillingly.” In the exordium, Clement praises the Corinthians’ past practice: when they sinned, they supplicated God for mercy.

The climax of chapter 7 (7.7). The Ninevites “obtained God’s mercy by supplicating” (ἐξιλάσαντο τὸν Θεὸν ἱκετεύσαντες).

The application (9.1). “Becoming suppliants (ἱκέται) of his mercy and goodness, let us fall down before him and turn to his compassions.”

The remedy for the Corinthian schism (48.1). Ἐξάρωμεν οὖν τοῦτο ἐν τάχει καὶ προσπέσωμεν τῷ δεσπότῃ καὶ κλαύσωμεν ἱκετεύοντες αὐτόν, ὅπως ἵλεως γενόμενος ἐπικαταλλαγῇ ἡμῖν. “Let us therefore root this out quickly, and fall down before the Master and weep, supplicating him, that he may become merciful and be reconciled to us.”

The closing prayer (59.2). αἰτησόμεθα ἐκτενῆ τὴν δέησιν καὶ ἱκεσίαν ποιούμενοι. “We will ask, making earnest prayer and supplication (ἱκεσίαν).” The proofs of the letter end with a long prayer (59.3–61.3) that asks, “forgive us our iniquities and our unrighteousnesses and our transgressions and our shortcomings” (ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἀνομίας ἡμῶν καὶ τὰς ἀδικίας καὶ τὰ παραπτώματα καὶ πλημμελείας, 60.1).

The theme therefore frames the letter. It opens in the exordium with the Corinthians supplicating God for mercy (2.3), and the proofs close with the Roman church doing the same (59.2–61.3). Ancient writers used this kind of framing, often called an inclusio, to mark the boundaries and the main concern of a work. In the closing prayer, the letter itself does what the Ninevites did.

The section addressed to the Corinthians (chapters 51–57). When Clement turns from general proofs to the Corinthian dispute itself, he prescribes the same response, built from confession and petition:

51.1: ἀξιώσωμεν ἀφεθῆναι ἡμῖν, “let us ask that we be forgiven”.

51.3: καλὸν γὰρ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐξομολογεῖσθαι περὶ τῶν παραπτωμάτων ἢ σκληρῦναι τὴν καρδίαν αὐτοῦ, “it is good for a man to confess his transgressions rather than to harden his heart”.

52.1: Ἀπροσδεής, ἀδελφοί, ὁ δεσπότης ὑπάρχει τῶν ἁπάντων· οὐδὲν οὐδενὸς χρῄζει εἰ μὴ τὸ ἐξομολογεῖσθαι αὐτῷ, “the Master of all things, brethren, has need of nothing; he requires nothing of anyone except that confession be made to him”. Clement confirms it with Psalm 51:17: “the sacrifice to God is a broken spirit” (52.4).

53.4: Moses intercedes, ἄφες τὴν ἁμαρτίαν τῷ λαῷ τούτῳ, “forgive this people their sin”, and Clement responds with an exclamation (ecphonesis), ὢ μεγάλης ἀγάπης, ὢ τελειότητος ἀνυπερβλήτου, “O great love! O unsurpassable perfection!” (53.5).

57.1: the leaders of the sedition are told to “be disciplined unto repentance, bending the knees of your heart” (παιδεύθητε εἰς μετάνοιαν, κάμψαντες τὰ γόνατα τῆς καρδίας ὑμῶν), the posture of a suppliant.

The climax of the humility list (chapter 18). The longest example in the whole letter, David in chapter 18, is itself a penitential supplication: Clement quotes Psalm 51 in full, beginning Ἐλέησόν με, ὁ θεός, κατὰ τὸ μέγα ἔλεός σου, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy” (18.2). The fullest example Clement gives anywhere is a sinner praying for mercy.

The closing summary (62.2). In the peroration, Clement lists what the letter has covered: περὶ γὰρ πίστεως καὶ μετανοίας καὶ γνησίας ἀγάπης καὶ ἐγκρατείας καὶ σωφροσύνης καὶ ὑπομονῆς πάντα τόπον ἐψηλαφήσαμεν, “for concerning faith and repentance and genuine love and self-control and sobriety and patience we have touched on every point”. Repentance is named second, directly after faith.

7. Objection: “Saved” in 1 Clement 7 Only Means “Delivered”

Someone may argue that 1 Clement 7 is not about salvation at all. Noah’s hearers were rescued from the flood and Nineveh was spared destruction, and in chapter 9 Clement uses the same verb for the animals brought safely through the ark: διέσωσεν … τὰ εἰσελθόντα … ζῷα εἰς τὴν κιβωτόν, “the Master brought safely through … the living creatures that entered into the ark” (9.4). On this reading, ἐσώθησαν and σωτηρία in chapter 7 mean physical deliverance, not salvation.

Clement does use σῴζω for physical rescue: the ark (9.4), Lot escaping Sodom (11.1) and Rahab’s household (12.1, 12.5–6). He also uses it for salvation in Christ: “that the number of his elect might be saved” (2.4), “Jesus Christ, our salvation” (τὸ σωτήριον ἡμῶν, 36.1), and “the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ” (τῶν σῳζομένων διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 58.2). Which sense he means is decided by the argument each word sits in, and in chapter 7 the argument is about salvation from sin:

The chapter defines its own “salvation”. 7.4 says Christ’s blood was shed “for our salvation” (διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν). 7.7 ends with the same noun: the Ninevites “received salvation” (ἔλαβον σωτηρίαν). The ring ties the Ninevites’ salvation to the salvation for which Christ died.

The problem in 7.7 is sin, not danger. The Ninevites repented “of their sins” (ἐπὶ τοῖς ἁμαρτήμασιν αὐτῶν) and “obtained God’s mercy” (ἐξιλάσαντο τὸν Θεόν). Escaping a disaster does not require propitiating God for sins; being forgiven does.

The thesis is conversion. 7.5 says God gives a place of repentance “to those willing to turn to him” (ἐπιστραφῆναι ἐπ’ αὐτόν), the language of turning to God.

Chapter 8 confirms it with Scripture on forgiveness. “I desire not the death of the sinner, but his repentance” (8.2, Ezekiel 33:11), and “though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white as snow” (8.4, Isaiah 1:18).

The application is to people in no physical danger. 9.1 tells the Corinthians, who face no flood or siege, to become “suppliants of his mercy” and “turn to his compassions”. The Ninevite pattern is applied to their standing with God.

Chapter 9 is a different argument. 9.2–4 begins a new list on those who served God faithfully (Enoch, Noah, Abraham). Noah appears there as a faithful minister, and the animals he brought through the flood are delivered, not converted. That use of διασῴζω for animals belongs to the new list, not to the argument of chapter 7.

The Old Testament events were deliverances, but Clement does not use them as stories of deliverance. He uses them as proofs that repentance, met by God’s mercy, brings the salvation for which Christ’s blood was shed.

8. What the Analysis Shows

Measured by the conventions of deliberative rhetoric and by Clement’s own habits, the Ninevite example is the capstone of 1 Clement 7. It stands last and fullest, it is set in antithesis to Noah as the harder case, its sentence rises to its strongest point, it closes the rings opened in 7.4, and it alone names how salvation is received. In 9.1 Clement turns it into his exhortation to the Corinthians: become suppliants of God’s mercy. The same pattern frames the whole letter, from the Corinthians’ supplication in the opening (2.3) to the church’s own prayer for forgiveness at the close of the proofs (59.2–60.1), and it is the remedy Clement prescribes for the schism itself (48.1, 51–57). The next list of examples (chapters 9–12) begins a new argument, on obedience, faith and hospitality, with its own climax in Rahab.

Sources

Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.9.40, Greek text ed. W. D. Ross; English trans. J. H. Freese (Loeb, 1926), via the Perseus Digital Library.

Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 9.4.23, trans. H. E. Butler (Loeb, 1920), via LacusCurtius.

Odd Magne Bakke, Concord and Peace: A Rhetorical Analysis of the First Letter of Clement with an Emphasis on the Language of Unity and Sedition (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), table of contents (the letter’s structure) and p. 8 (citing W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, 13).

Greek text of 1 Clement: Lightfoot (1869), corrected from the Jerusalem codex; word counts and chapters 9.1 and 45–55 from Kirsopp Lake’s edition (1912), as corrected by the Open Apostolic Fathers project.

English of 1 Clement 7.6–7: J. B. Lightfoot’s translation. Other translations are literal.