Authorship

The letter claims to be written by Paul and Sosthenes (1:1) and there is no reason to doubt this ascription. As in other cases of supposedly joint authorship (e.g. 2 Cor 1:1), Paul probably took the sole responsibility (16:21). Clement accepted the letter as Paul’s at the end of the first century CE (1 Clem 47) and all modern scholars concur, with doubts surrounding only certain sections (see on 11:2–16 and 14:34–5).