Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Having thus pointed out a small opening "to those who love the contemplation of truth" from the law concerning sacrifices, regarding both the common Jews and the sects mystically distinguished as unclean, [with regard to how the pure creatures are marked off from the impure] within the assembly consecrated to God, let us bring the discussion to a close. For those sacrificial animals that part the hoof and chew the cud Scripture hands over as clean and acceptable to God, inasmuch as it is those making their journey toward the Father and the Son through the faith of the righteous (for this is the steadfastness of those that part the hoof) who "ponder God's utterances" "by night as by day" and turn them over again in the receptacle of the soul's learnings. This the law allegorizes as the chewing of the cud of a clean animal, which is in fact a gnostic exercise. But whatever has neither the one nor the other of these it sets apart as unclean. Thus, animals that chew the cud but do not part the hoof it obscurely signifies as the mass of Jews, who carry God's sayings on their tongues yet lack the faith and the footing that leads through the Son to the Father resting firmly on the truth. Hence the tribe of such creatures is also slippery, since they are not cloven-footed nor do they rest on the twofoldness of faith; for he says, "No one knows the Father except the Son, and whomever the Son reveals him to." And conversely, unclean likewise are those other animals which part the hoof but do not chew the cud. For these signify the heretics, who tread upon the name of Father and Son but are too weak to work out finely and smooth down the exact clarity of the oracles, and moreover pursue even the works of righteousness more crudely and not with greater exactness — that is, if they pursue them at all.
To some such people the Lord says: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I say?" And wholly unclean are those who lack both the cloven hoof and the chewing of the cud. "You Megarians," Theognis declares, "count for nothing — not third, not fourth, not twelfth; you enter no reckoning and no tally, but are like husks the wind sweeps off the ground," and "like a droplet spilled from a jug."
Now that these matters have been set forth beforehand by us, and the ethical topic sketched in summary, having scattered here and there, as we promised, and strewn about the sparks of the doctrines of true knowledge, so that it should not be easy for any uninitiated person who chances upon them to find the holy traditions, let us proceed to fulfill our promise.
The Stromateis resemble, in a way, not those gardens laid out in rows planted for the pleasure of the eye, but rather some shaded and thickly wooded mountain, planted with cypresses and plane trees and laurel and ivy, together with apple trees and olives and figs, the planting deliberately intermingled, both fruit-bearing and fruitless trees together, on account of those who dare to filch and steal the ripe fruit, since the writing wishes to remain hidden from them. From these the farmer, transplanting and grafting, will arrange a beautiful garden and a delightful grove. So then the Stromateis aim neither at order nor at fine phrasing, seeing that they deliberately wish even their diction not to be Greek, and have made the sowing-in of their doctrines covertly and not straightforwardly, so as to prepare those who read them, whoever they may chance to be, to be industrious and inventive. For many and varied are the baits, on account of the differences among the fish.
And indeed, after this seventh Stromateus of ours, we shall in what follows make our discourse from another starting point.
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