It is easy to see that this appeal to a pseudo-Petrine primitive Christianity was made by the author of the Homilies with a view to reconcile all the existing differences and divisions in Christendom. In this effort he, of course, did not succeed, but rather made way for the dissolution of the Ebionitic element still existing in the orthodox catholic church.
Besides these Homilies, of which the Epitome is only a poor abridgement, there are several other works, some printed, some still unpublished, which are likewise forged upon Clement of Rome, and based upon the same historical material, with unimportant deviations, but are in great measure free, as to doctrine, from Judaistic and Gnostic ingredients, and come considerably nearer the line of orthodoxy.
The most important of these are the Recognitions of Clement, in ten books, mentioned by Origen, but now extant only in a Latin translation by Rufinus. They take their name from the narrative, in the last books, of the reunion of the scattered members of the Clementine family, who all at last find themselves together in Christianity, and are baptized by Peter.
On the question of priority between these two works, critics are divided, some making the Recognitions an orthodox, or at least more nearly orthodox, version of the Homilies; [793] 93 others regarding the Homilies as a heretical corruption of the Recognitions. [794] 94 But in all probability both works are based upon older and simpler Jewish-Christian documents, under the assumed names of Peter and Clement. [795] 95
As to their birth-place, the Homilies probably originated in East Syria, the Recognitions in Rome. They are assigned to the second half of the second century.
In a literary point of view, these productions are remarkable, as the first specimens of Christian romance, next to the "Pastor Hermae." They far surpass, in matter, and especially in moral earnestness and tender feeling, the heathen romances of a Chariton and an Achilles Tatios, of the fourth or fifth centuries. The style, though somewhat tedious, is fascinating in its way, and betrays a real artist in its combination of the didactic and historical, the philosophic and the poetic elements.
Notes.
Lagarde (in the Preface to his edition of the Clementina, p. 22) and G. E. Stietz (in the lengthy review of Lagarde in the "Studien und Kritiken" for 1867, No. III p. 556 sqq), draw a parallel between the pseudo-Clementine fiction of Simon and the German story of Faust, the magician, and derive the latter from the former through the medium of the Recognitions, which were better known in the church than the homilies. George Sabellicus , about a.d. 1507, called himself Faustus junior, magus secundus. Clement's father is called Faustus, and his two brothers, Fatistinus and Faustinianus (in the Recognitions Faustus, and Faustinus), were brought up with Simon the magician, and at first associated with him. The characters of Helena and Homunculus appear in both stories, though very differently. I doubt whether these resemblances are sufficient to establish a connection between the two otherwise widely divergent popular fictions.
[785] Klementos ton Petrou epidemion kerugmaton epitome.
[786] The Tübingen School, under the lead of Dr. Baur, has greatly exaggerated the importance of these heretical fictions which the unknown author never intended to present as solid facts. Thus Hilgenfeld says (l. c. p. 1) There is scarcely a single writing which is of so great importance for the history of Christianity in its first age, and which has already given such brilliant disclosures [?] at the hands of the most renowned critics in regard to the earliest history of the Christian Church, as the writing ascribed to the Roman Clement, the Recognitions and Homilies."Their importance is confined to the history of heresy, which with the Tübingen school is the most interesting portion of ancient church history.
[787] The Tübingen school first denied the use of the fourth Gospel, but the discovery of the missing portion by Dressel in 1853 has settled this point, for it contains (Hom. XIX. 22) a clear quotation from John 9:1-3.
[788] The hypothesis has been most fully carried out by Lipsius in his article on Simon Magus in Schenkel's "Bibellexicon, " vol. V. 301-321.
[789] Comp. Hom. XVII. 19 (p. 351 sq. ed. Dressel) with Gal. 2:11, where Paul uses the game word kategnomenos of Peter.
[790] Hom. II. 22 sqq. (p. 57 sqq.).
[791] The prote te anthropoteri paradotheisa soterios threskeia.
[792] Pur katharsion, ignis purgatorius.
[793] Clericus, Möhler, Schliemann, Uhlhorn, Schwegler, partly also Lehmann. Uhlhorn has since modified his view (1876).
[794] Particularly Hilgenfeld and Ritschl, find among older writers, Cave and Whiston. Salmon also assigns the priority of composition to the Recognitions.
[795] The Periodoi Petrou dia Klementos,and the still older Kerugmata Petrou (about a.d. 140-145), the contents of which are mentioned in Recogn. III. 75, and the oldest Acta Petri, parts of which are preserved in the apocryphal Acta Petri et Pauli. See Lipsius, Quellen der röm. Petrus-Sage, 1872, pp. 14 sqq. Uhlhorn assents in his last art. in the new ed. of Herzog, III. 285. Dr. Salmon (in Smith and Wace, 1. 571) likewise assumes that both are drawn from a common original, but that the author of Homilies borrowed the biographical portions from Recognitions.