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190 physical theory of the injury done by demons. They are represented as having sensual desires, which, being spirits, they can gratify only by incorporation with human bodies. They use therefore the permission which the divine law grants them, of entering into the bodies of men who partake of forbidden food, or who, by worshipping them, subject themselves to their power; and with these the union is so close, that after death, when the demons descend to their natural regions of fire, the souls united to them are forced to accompany them, though grievously tormented by the element in which the demon feels pleasure. The opposition between fire and light is much dwelt on; and again, the water of baptism and other ablutions is represented as having a kind of physical efficacy in quenching the demonic fire. All this doctrine concerning demons shews itself comparatively faintly in R.; yet there seem indications that the doctrine as expounded in H., was contained in the original on which R. worked. It is natural to think that the earlier form is that one of which the doctrine is most peculiar; the later, that in which the divergences from orthodox teaching are smoothed away. Yet it is not always true that originality implies priority; and the application of this principle has caused some of the parts of H. which can be shewn to be the most recent, to be accepted as belonging to the original. For instance, we have seen that the private conversation between Peter and his disciples in the 20th homily bears on the face of it marks of interpolation; yet the clearness and peculiarity of its doctrine have caused it to be set down as belonging to the most ancient part of the work. The same may be said of the section concerning philanthropy at the end of the 12th homily, which, however, is wanting in the Syriac, and may be reasonably set down as one of the most modern parts. For it is an addition made by H. to the story of the recognitions as told by R.; and we have already shewn that in all that relates to the recognitions H. is more recent than R. We arrive at more certain results, if, examining the sections we have named, and for which H. is most responsible, we try to discover his favourite thoughts and forms of expression, and so to recognize the hand of the latest reviser in other parts of the work. Space will not permit such an examination here; but we may notice the fondness of H. for discovering a male and female element in things, and for contrasting things under the names of male and female. The almost total absence of the idea from R. makes it unlikely that it could have had any great prominence in the original document. The idea, however, became very popular in the sect to which H. belonged; and is noticed by a writer of the 10th cent. as a characteristic of some Ebionites then still remaining (see Hilgenfeld, N. T. Extra Can. Recept. iii. 156). The germ, however, of the distinction between male and female prophecy, on which H. lays so much stress, was apparently in the original document, which disposed of the testimony borne by our Lord to John the Baptist by the distinction that John was the greatest of the prophets born of women, but not on the level of the Son of Man. The general result of an attempt to discriminate what belongs to H. and R. respectively, from what they found in their common original, leads to the belief that H., far more nearly than R., represents the doctrinal aspect of the original, from which the teaching of H. differs only by legitimate development.

The Clementines are unmistakably a production of that sect of Ebionites which held the book of Elkesai as sacred. For an account of the sources whence our knowledge of this book is derived, and for the connexion of the sect with Essenism, see Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century/Elkesai, Elkesaites in D. C. B. (4-vol. ed.). Almost all the doctrines ascribed to them are to be found in the Clementines—e.g. the doctrine of successive incarnations of Christ, and in particular the identification of Christ with Adam, the requirement of the obligations of the Mosaic Law, the rejection however of the rite of sacrifice, the rejection of certain passages both of O.T. and N.T., hostility to St. Paul, abstinence from flesh (H. viii. 15, xii. 6, xv. 7), the inculcation of repeated washing, discouragement of virginity, concealment of their sacred books from all but approved persons, form of adjuration by appeal to the seven witnesses, ascription of gigantic stature to the angels (H. viii. 15), permission to dissemble the faith in time of persecution (R. i. 65, x. 55); while again the supposed derivation of the book of Elkesai from the Seres is explained by R. viii. 48, where the Seres are described as a nation by whom all the observances on which the Ebionites laid stress were naturally kept, and who were consequently exempt from the penalties of sickness and premature death which attended their neglect. Ritschl regards the book of Elkesai as an exposition of these doctrines later than the Homilies; but we are disposed to look on it as earlier than the work which formed the common basis of H. and R. A recognition of this book is not improbably contained in a passage which is important in reference to the use made by H. and R. of their common original. The date which the book of Elkesai claimed for itself was the third year of Trajan. Whether it actually were so old need not here be inquired, but the fact that it was confessedly no older might seem to put it at a disadvantage in comparison with the Pauline system which it rejected. But its adherents defended their position by their doctrine of pairs—viz. that it has been ever God's method to pair good and evil together, sending forth first the evil, then the countervailing good. Thus Cain was followed by Abel, Ishmael by Isaac, Esau by Jacob, so now, Simon Magus by Peter; and at the end of the world Antichrist will be followed by Christ. The penultimate pair enumerated takes, in the translation of Rufinus, a form scarcely intelligible; but the Syriac shews that the version given by R. did not essentially differ from that of H.; and that the contrasted pairs predicted by Peter are a false gospel sent abroad by a deceiver, and a true gospel secretly disseminated after the destruction of the holy place, for the rectification of the then existing heresies. It seems most probable that we are here to understand the doctrine of Paul and of Elkesai; and it may be noted that the fact, that, in this pair, gospels, not persons, are 