Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/206

188  to conduct the disputation than the unknown Faustinianus. Further H. (xx. 15) and R. (x. 57) both state that the magical transformation of Clement's father takes place on the same day that he had been recognized by his family. This agrees with the story as told by R.; but H. had made five days' disputation intervene between the recognition and the transformation. Thus in the account of each of the three sets of recognitions there is evidence that H. copied either from R. or from a writer who tells the story exactly as R. does; and the former hypothesis is to be preferred because there is no evidence whatever of R.'s non-originality in this part of his task.

(5) We have seen that in H. there are two disputations of Simon with Peter, viz. at Caesarea and at Laodicea. There is decisive proof that in this H. has varied from the original form, which, as R. does, laid the scene of the entire disputation at Caesarea. The indications here, however, point to a borrowing not from R. but from a common original. H. does relate a disputation at Caesarea, but evidently reserves his materials for use further on, giving but a meagre sketch of part of one day's dispute, while he conscientiously follows his authority and relates that the dispute lasted three days. Afterwards at Laodicea the topics brought forward in the earlier discussion are produced as if new. Simon, e.g., expresses the greatest surprise at Peter's manner of disposing of the alleged spurious passages of the Pentateuch, although exactly the same line of argument had been used by Peter on the former occasion. The phenomenon again presents itself (H. xviii. 21) of a reference to former words of Peter which are not to be found in H. itself, but are found in R. ii. 45. Lastly, in the disputation at Laodicea, the office of summoning Peter to the conflict is ascribed to Zacchaeus, in flagrant contradiction of the previous story, according to which Zacchaeus was the leading man of the church at Caesarea before Peter's arrival, and had been left behind as its bishop on Peter's departure. This alone is enough to shew that H. is copying from an original, in which the scene is laid at Caesarea. It may be added that the Apostolic Constitutions make mention only of a Caesarean disputation.

(6) It has been stated that the last homily contains private expositions by Peter to his disciples, and these can clearly be proved to be an interpolation. In R., after the disputation on "genesis" in which Clement's father is convinced, the party having returned home and being about to sit down to meat, news comes of the arrival of Apion and Anubion and Faustinianus goes to salute them. In H. the party have retired to rest, and Peter wakes them up in the middle of the night to receive his instructions; yet in the middle of this midnight discourse we have an account, almost verbally agreeing with R., of the news of the arrival of Apion coming just as they were about to sit down to meat, and the consequent departure of Clement's father. The discourse, thus clearly shewn to be an interpolation, contains H.'s doctrine concerning the devil, and is in such close connexion with the preceding homily (which relates how Peter, in his Laodicean disputation, dealt with the problem of the permission of evil in the universe) that this also must be set down as an addition made by H. to the original story. We can see why H. altered the original account of a Caesarean disputation—namely, that he wished to reserve as the climax of his story, the solutions which he put into Peter's mouth of the great controversy of his own day.

(7) In section H. ii. 19‒32, which contains the information given by Nicetas and Aquila concerning Simon, there are plain marks that H. is not original. Nicetas, in repeating a conversation with Simon, speaks of himself in the third person: "Nicetas answered," instead of "I answered." In the corresponding section of R., Aquila is the speaker, and the use of the third person is correct. Yet this matter, in which H. is clearly not original, is so different from R., that we conclude that both copied from a common original. One instance in this section, however, deserves to be mentioned as an apparent case of direct copying from R. In H. ii. 22, Simon is represented as teaching that the dead shall not rise, and as rejecting Jerusalem and substituting Mount Gerizim for it; but nowhere else is there a trace of such doctrine being ascribed to Simon; and no controversy on these subjects is reported in the Homilies. There is strong reason for suspecting that H. has here blundered in copying R. i. 57, where a Samaritan, whom there is no ground for identifying with Simon, is introduced as teaching these doctrines of the non-resurrection of the dead, and of the sanctity of Mount Gerizim.

We turn to some of the reasons why R. must also be regarded as the retoucher of a previously existing story. The work itself recognizes former records of the things which it relates. In the preface it purports to be an account written after the death of Peter of discourses, some of which had by Peter's command been written down and sent to James during his own lifetime. R. iii. 75 contains an abstract of the contents of ten books of these previously-sent reports. Again, R. v. 36, we are told of the dispatch to James of a further instalment. Everything confirms the conclusion that R. is here using the credit which an existing narrative had gained, in order to obtain acceptance for his own additions to the story. Moreover, as we have seen, there are instances in the first division of the work where H. is clearly not original, and yet has not copied from R.; whence we infer the existence of an independent authority, at least for the earlier portion, employed by both writers. There are places where H. and R. seem to supplement one another, each supplying details omitted by the other; other places where it would seem as if an obscure passage in the common original had been differently understood by each; and in the discourses common to both, there are places where the version presented by H. preserves so much better the sequence of ideas and the cogency of argument that it is scarcely possible to think the form in R. the original (cf. esp. H. ix. 9, 10, R. iv. 15, 16). There are places, again, where both seem to have abridged the common original. Thus R. mentions concerning an early conversation, that none of the women were present. There is no further mention of 