“... That text includes an invitation to its implied audience to “take up the letter of the blessed apostle Paul” (1 Clem 47.1). “What did [Paul] write to you first in the beginning of the gospel?” Clements then asks. “Truly he wrote to you in a spiritual manner concerning himself and Cephas and Apollos, since even at that time you had divided yourselves into factions.” Here Clement apparently was referring to 1 Cor 1:12, where the apostle Paul described how each of the Corinthians had identified themselves with either him or Apollos or Cephas or Christ. This reference clearly indicates that Clement assumed that his Corinthian audience both knew at least one of Paul’s letters and recognized his and its authority, even decades after Paul’s death. ...”