Clement’s exhortations to return to former behavior are derived from both the Old Testament and examples drawn from the early church. The letter seems to have been a response to a situation in which some members of the Corinthian church rose up and deposed certain of their elders. The date of the message is open to some debate, but if we make the assumption that Domitian’s persecutions ended with the emperor’s death, then it seems likely that it was writtensomewhere around96 C.E. It begins by saying that the delay in its sending from Rome was due to “sudden and successive calamitous events,” which appears to be a reference to the persecutions of the emperor Domitian. However, he did leave one epistle that is widely considered to be genuine, a letter to a church in Corinth. Several writings have been attributed to Clement, though most are believed to be spurious. As is often the case, however, things are not necessarily what they seem to be. One particular passage in Clement’s writings spawned a set of ideas that on the face of it may seem innocent and even helpful to believers. In what follows we will consider the basis of their teachings about the phoenix: a letter attributed to the man who is purported to have been the earliest of the Roman Catholic Church Fathers, Clement of Rome. Nothing more might need to be said about Christian involvement were it not for the fact that some early churchmen capitalized on the fable’s popularity as they shaped the developing Christian orthodoxy. Yet the myth of the phoenix was immensely popular throughout the ancient world even early Christians were quite familiar with it. The image of the mystical phoenix is widely recognized, though perhaps not everyone is familiar with the story behind the bird.

Phoenix bird origin