Clementine literature

The Clementine literature (also referred to as the Clementine Romance or Pseudo-Clementine Writings) is the name given to a third-century Christiance romance or "novel" purporting to contain a record made by Pope Clement I, the cousin of Titus Flavius Clemens. Though lost, it survives in two recensions known as the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Recognitions. Both were composed in the fourth-century. In turn, there was plausibly a second-century document (referred to as the Kerygmata Petrou or "Preaching of Peter") that was used a source for the original Clementine literature text. The Kerygma are thought to consist of a letter from Peter to James, lectures and debates of Peter, and James's testimony about the letters recipients.

The Clementine literature presents discourses involving the Apostle Peter, an account of the circumstances under which Clement came to be Peter's travelling companion, and details related to the family history of Clement. To reflect the pseudonymous nature of the authorship, the author is sometimes referred to as Pseudo-Clement.

Overview

Two versions of this romance have survived:

  • Clementine Homilies (H), consisting of 20 books and survives in the original Greek.
  • Clementine Recognitions (R), for which the original Greek has been lost but exists in a Latin translation produced by Tyrannius Rufinus in 406.

Two later epitomes of the Homilies also exist, and there is a partial Syriac translation, which embraces the Recognitions (books 1–3), and the Homilies (books 10–14), preserved in two British Library manuscripts, one of which was written in the year 411. Fragments of the Clementines are also known in Arabic, Armenian and Slavonic. Though H and R largely correspond in wording and content, and have a similar length and framework, there is material that is distinctive to both.

It is now almost universally held that H and R are two versions of an original and longer Clementine romance that largely covered the content in the extant versions.

Redactional history

A substantial part of the first book of R (chs. 27-71) differs from the form and content of the rest of the work and appears to involve the addition of at least three originally distinct works:

  • A creation account and history of Israel terminating with the Coming of Christ (chs. 27–42).
  • A treatise dealing with the question of whether Jesus should be understood as "the eternal Christ", and discusses his priestly and salvatory role (chs. 44–52). This contains material similar to the Epistle to the Hebrews and 1 Thessalonians.
  • A section which may correspond to material in the Ascents of James according to Epiphanius of Salamis (chs. 53–71).

It is also possible that redactions on the part of Gnostics andEbionites may have contributed to the redactional history of the Clementine literature.

Date

Scholarly hypotheses have placed the date of the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies between the second and fourth centuries. The earliest manuscripts, composed in the Syriac language, are from the fifth century. In 406, Tyrannius Rufinus produced a translation of the text from Greek into Latin. For these reasons, the present consensus places these texts in the mid-fourth century, originating perhaps in Syria.

An entry on the Clementine literature in the Catholic Encyclopedia provides an extensive overview of the literature on the date of these texts up until 1908, when the entry was originally written.

Reception

It was once thought that the earliest witness to the Clementine literature was in two quotations in the works of Origen. These quotations are cited in the Philokalia of Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil. However, the passages turn out not to appear in Origen's own writing, but were added by compilers. Today, the earliest witness is considered to be a passage in the writings of Eusebius:

And now some have only the other day brought forward other wordy and lengthy compositions as being Clement's, containing dialogues of Peter and Appion, of which there is absolutely no mention in the ancients. Ecclesiastical History, 3.38

Next we find the Clementines used by Ebionites c. 360. They are quoted as the Periodi by St. Jerome in 387 and 392 (On Galatians 1:18, and Adv. Jovin., 1:26). Two forms of the Recognitions were known to Rufinus, and one of them was translated by him c. 400. Around 408, Paulinus of Nola in a letter to Rufinus mentions having himself translated a part or all, perhaps as an exercise in Greek. The Opus imperfectum above mentioned has five quotations. It is apparently by an Arian of the beginning of the 5th century, possibly by a bishop called Maximus. The Syriac translation was made before 411, the date of one of the Manuscripts. After this time citations occur in many Byzantine writers, and from the commendation given by Nicephorus Callisti (14th century) we may gather that an orthodox version was current. In the West the translation by Rufinus became very popular, and citations are found in Syriac and Arabic writings.


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