I. CLEMENT

The Coptic manuscript, where it is bound directly alongside the books of the Bible The "canonical books" are those officially recognized as part of the Holy Scriptures., suggests that during the early Christian period in Alexandria and Egypt, First Clement was regarded as part of the New Testament.

The relationships existing between these different authorities for the text have not been finally established. However, it appears clear that none of them can be regarded as undoubtedly superior to the others. Consequently, any critical text A version of the text reconstructed by scholars to be as close to the original as possible. is necessarily eclectic In textual criticism, an "eclectic" approach involves choosing what the editor believes to be the best reading from various different manuscripts rather than following a single source.. At the same time, there is very little range of variation between the sources, and the readings which remain in serious doubt are few and, as a rule, unimportant.

The symbols employed in quoting the textual evidence are as follows:

A = Codex Alexandrinus A 5th-century manuscript of the Greek Bible, one of the most important witnesses to the biblical text.
C = Codex Constantinopolitanus An 11th-century Greek manuscript found in Istanbul in 1873, containing the complete text of the epistles.
L = Latin Version.
S = Syriac Version A dialect of Aramaic used by Christians in the Near East..
K = Coptic Version (Kb = the Berlin manuscript, Ks = the Strasbourg manuscript).
Clem = Clement of Alexandria A prominent Christian teacher and writer from the late 2nd century who frequently quoted early Christian works..