Pantaenus.

        Most of what we know of his master Pantaenus we learn from Clement, who seems to refer to him when he speaks of the “blessed presbyter”; he very rarely mentions his name. Alexander of Jerusalem, Origen, Pamphilus, and Eusebius all mention Pantaenus and speak of him with respect. Eusebius and Jerome went so far as to credit him with a good deal of writing, probably through a misunderstanding of what Clement had said. Clement himself shows that Pantaenus left no writings behind him (Miscellanies 1. I. II).

        It was Pantaenus who taught Clement that Paul was the author of Hebrews (Church History vi. 14. 4), and it was through Clement that this idea became established in the Eastern church and extended finally, two centuries later, to the West as well. Alexander of Jerusalem was another of his pupils and admirers (Church History vi. 14. 8). Lightfoot suggested that Pantaenus might have been the author of the work from which, he thought, the last two chapters of the Letter to Diognetus were taken and pointed out that such language on the part of Pantaenus might have led Photius (Bibliotheca 118) to say, quite erroneously of course, that Pantaenus had heard the apostles preach.[62] But Clement clearly implies in Miscellanies i. I that he had to depend on his notes and his memory for the teachings of his masters, the elders, or presbyters, as he calls them; and in Selections 27 he distinctly says, “The elders did not write.” Of course, if Tatian was actually one of Clement's teachers, Clement certainly did not have him in mind when he wrote this.

        Pantaenus was the last of Clement's teachers and the one who gave him most satisfaction. “When I came upon the last (he was first in power), having tracked him out, concealed in Egypt, I found rest. He, the true Sicilian bee, gathering the spoil of the flowers of the prophetic and apostolic meadow, engendered in the souls of his hearers a deathless element of knowledge.”

        Origen appeals to the practice of Pantaenus in defense of his own custom of dealing with the teachings of the philosophers as a proper part of Christian studies (Church History vi. I9. I3). Both Eusebius and Jerome say that Pantaenus went on a mission to India (Church History v. 10. 3; On Illustrious Men 36).