Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/64

 CLEMENTINES

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CLEMENTINES

before his conversion, and the writer is very careful to avoid anachronisms. But his Epistles are regularly used, and the grounds for supposing that Simon always or sometimes represents St. Paul are exceed- ingly feeble. The latest critics, who still admit that St. Paul is occasionally combated, do not attribute this attitude to the Clementine writer, but only to one of some presumed sources. In fact, there is a clear prophetic reference to St. Paul as the teacher of the nations in R. iii, 61. But it is not safe to admit any polemic against St. Paul's person in any part of the writings, for the simple reason that there is no- where any trace of antagonism to his doctrines.

It seems to be universally held that the Clemen- tines are based upon the doctrines of the Book of Elchasai or Hel.xai, which was much used by the Ebionites. The contents of it were said to have been revealed by an angel ninety-six miles high to a holy man Elchasai in the year 100, and this is gravely ac- cepted by Hilgenfeld and Waitz as its real date. It does not, however, seem to have been known until it was brought to Rome about the year 220, by a cer- tain Alcibiades of Apamea. We know its doctrines from the " Philosophumcna" and from Epiphanius. It taught a second baptism (in running streams with all the clothes on) for the remission of sins, to be ac- companied by an adjuration of seven elements; the same process was recommended as a cure for the bite of mad dogs and for similar evils. This is not par- ticularly like the calling of four (not seven) elements to witness a solemn promise by the side of water (without bathing) in the Clementines. For the rest, Elchasai taught magic and astrology, made marriage compulsory, celebrated the Eucharist with bread and water, caused all believers to be circumcised and to live by the Jewish law, held that Christ was born of a human father. All this is contradictory to the Clementines. The only point of resemblance seems to be that the Homilies represent Christ as having been in Adam and Moses, wliile Elchasai said He had been frequently incarnate in Adam and since, and would be again. The Clementine writer is fond of pairs of antitheses, or irufiVym, such as Christ and the tempter, Peter and Simon. But these have no con- nexion with any Gnostic or Marcionite antitheses, nor is there any trace of the Gnostic genealogies. He is simply airing his own pseudo-philosophic specula- tions. Polemic against Marcionism has often been pointed out. But the denial of two Gods, a tran- scendental God and a Creator, is directed against popu- lar neo-Platonism, and not against Marcion. Again, replies are made to objections to Christianity drawn from immorality or anthropomorphism in the Old Testament, but these objections are not Marcionite. The writer is fond of citing .sayings of Christ not found in Scripture. His Scrijiture text has been analyzed by Hilgenfeld, Waitz, and others. He never cites a book of the N. T. by name, which would be an an- achronism at the date he has chosen.

Early Use of the Clementi.ves. — It was long believed that the early date of the Clementines was proved by the fact that they were twice quoted by Origen. One of these quotations occurs in the "Philocalia" of Sts. Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil (c. 300). Dr. Armitage Robinson showed in his edi- tion of that work (189:i) that the citation is an addi- tion to the passage of Origen made by the compilers, or possibly by a later editor. The other citation occvirs in the old Latin translation of Origen on Matthew. This translation is full of interpolations and alterations, and the passage of Pseudo-Clement is ajjparently an interpolation by the t ranslator from the Arian " Op\is imperfeotum in Matt." (See Journal of Theol. Studies. III. .1.3.) Omitting Origen, the earliest witness is Eusebius. In his " Hist. Eccl.". Ill, xxxviii (.\. n. 'A'2Fi) ][>• mentions some short writings and adds: 'And now some have only the other day

brought forward other wordy and lengthy compo- sitions as being Clement's, containing dialogues of Peter and Appion, of which there is absolutely no mention in the ancients." These dialogues need not have been the complete romance, but may have been an earlier draft of part of it. Next we find the Clem- entines used by Ebionites c. 360 (Epiphanius, Hser., XXX, 15). They are quoted as the "Periodi" by St. Jerome in 387 and 392 (On Gal., i, IS, and "Adv. Jovin.", i, 26). Two forms of the "Recognitions" were kno\vn to Rufinus, and one of them was trans- lated by him c. 400. About 408 St. Paulinus of Nola, in a letter to Rufinus, mentions having himself translated a part or all, perha]5s as an exercise in Greek. The " Opus imperfectum " above mentioned has five quotations. It is apparently by an Arian of the beginning of the fifth century, possibly by a bishop called Maximus. The Syriac translation was made before 411, the date of one of the MSS. After this time citations occur in many Byzantine writers, and from the commendation given by Nicephorus Callisti (fourteenth century) we may gather that an orthodox version was current. In the West the translation by Riifinus became very popular, and citations arc found in Syriac and Arabic writings.

Modern Theories of Origin .\nd Date. — Baur, the founder of the "Tubingen School" of New Testa- ment criticism, rested his ideas about the New Testa- ment on the Clementines, and his ideas about the Clementines on St. Epiphanius, who found the writ- ings used by an Ebionite sect in the fourth century. This Judseo-Christian sect at that date rejected St. Paul as an apostate. It was assumed that this fourth-century opinion represented the Christianity of the Twelve Apostles; Paulinism was originally a heresy, and a schism from the Jewish Christianity of James and Peter and tlie rest; Marcion was a leader of the Pauline sect in its survival in the second cen- tury, using only the Pauline Gospel, St. Luke (in its original form), and the Epistles of St. Paul (\\'ithout the Pastoral l^iistlcs). The Clementine literature had its first origin in the Apostolic Age, and belonged to the original Jewish. Pctrine, legal Church. It is directed wholly against St. Paul and his sect. Simon Magus never existed; it is a nickname for St. Paul. The Acts of the Apostles, compiled in the second cen- tury, have borrowed their mention of Simon from the earliest form of the Clementines. Catholicism under the presidency of Rome was the result of the adjustment between the Petrine and Pauline sections of the Church in the second half of the second century. The Fourth Gospel is a monument of this reconcili- ation, in which Rome took a leading part, having in- vented the fiction that both Peter and Paul were the founders of her Church, both having been martyred at Rome, and on the same day, in perfect union.

Throughout the middle of the nineteenth century this theory, in many forms, was dominant in Ger- many. The demonstration, mainly by English scholars, of tlio iiripossibility of the late dates ascribed to the New Testaiiii'iit documents (four Epistles of St. Paul and the Apiicalyp.se were the only documents generally admitted as being of early date'i, and the proofs of the authenticity of the Apostolic Fathers and of the use of St. John's Gospel by Justin, Papias, and Ignatius gradually brought Baur's theories into discredit. Of the original school, Adolf Hilgen- feld may be considered the last survivor (d. 1907). He was induced many years ago to admit that Simon Magus was a real personage, though he persists that in the Clementines he is meant for St. Paul. To a priori critics it counts as nothing that Simon holds no Pauline doctrine and that the author shows no signs of being a Judaeo-Cliristian. In 1847 Hilgenfeld dated the original nucleus ( Preachings of Peter) soon after the Jewish war of 70; successive revisions of it were anti-Basilidian, anti-Valcntinian, and anti-