Overview

The Clementines, which are made up of the "Recognitions of Clement" and "The Clementine Homilies", are a unique religious romance purported to be composed by Pope Clement I. The story represents Clement's search and induction into the Christian faith by Peter. The Latin form is the "Recognitions of Clement" consists of ten books. It is a translation made from the Greek by Rufinus, who died in 410. (The Greek, from which it was translated, is no longer in existence). The Greek form is "The Clementine Homilies" consists of twenty books. It is preserved in two manuscripts. Two later epitomes of the Homilies exist also, and there is a partial Syriac translation, embracing Recognitions i-iii, and Homilies, x-xiv, preserved in two British Museum manuscripts, one of which was written in the year 411.

There is no doubt that there once existed a document that was used to construct Recognitions and Homilies. Large portions of the Homilies and Recognitions are almost word for word the same, especially at the beginning, and correspond in subject and more or less in treatment. However, other parts are contained only in one and appear to be referred to or presupposed in the other. It will be shown if it is not already obvious that the twins Niceta an Aquila are James and John. The name Aquila even occurs in Acts 18:2,18,26; Romans 16:3; 1 Cor 16:19 & 2 Timothy 4:19)

It would be beneficial for the reader see on this site the Source of Clementine Recognitions and Homilies
which presents the two versions in side by side columns according to theme.

The need to establish the true date of origin for the Clementines.

Although purported to be the words of Pope Clement as narrator, the Clementines have been summarily dismissed by scholars a pseudo works (pretended to be the actual words of Clement). Scholars have therefore placed the dates for these works from second century all the way up to the fourth century.

Unfortunately, many apocryphal works use this method of pretending to be the words of one or the other prophets or even Jesus, but this has been merely a style of exposition and not meant to deceive. Many examples of this form of exposition can be seen in the Nag Hammadi Library discovered in 1945, however the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip contained in this library do appear to contain the actual words of the speakers especially of Jesus.

Since Pope Clement is in fact a real person who lived in the first century AD, it ought to be logical to believe that it was written in the first century. However, what appears to most bother the scholars and the Church about the Clementines is the primacy of Simon Magus who only appears in a few verses in Acts as an initiate who is baptized by the disciple Philip (Acts 8:9-24).

The late third century Church scholar of the third century Eusebius went to great lengths to denounce Simon Magus as a heretic. The Clementines do in fact treat Simon Magus in an unfavorable light, but the Clementines do show him as a major opponent to Peter. The scholars question how an initiate of Philip could have attained such stature in such a short time. Although Simon appears to use tricks and magic, Peter also appears not to be without these himself.

What is most disturbing to Church authorities is that Clementines say that Simon Magus took over the organization of John the Baptist after his death. This would clearly give him the stature to be on an equal footing as Peter in their debates.

Another problem to the Church is the strong resemblance of Niceta and Aquila to James and John. If this is true then the influence of Simon Magus and his consort Helena on Jesus is immense. His consort Helena (Luna, Justa) clearly matches the Syro-Phoenician woman as her words in H.2.19 are directly from Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30. She was the one female of the Gospels who appeared to speak with Jesus as his equal.

In fact it may be implied from this section in Homilies that the natural daughter of Helena is Mary Magdalene!!!
"But she, being faithful to her engagements, and being in affluent circumstances, remained a widow herself, but gave her daughter ![Mary Magdalene]
(Matthew 9:20-25; Mark 5:25-43 See Helena 12 year issue of blood i.e. 12-year virginity since the birth of her daughter implying that her daughter is twelve and thus Mary Magdalene's coming of age shown as the raising of Jairus' daughter.)
"in marriage to a certain man who was attached to the true faith" [Jesus!!]", and who was poor." [member of the Essenes] "And, abstaining from marriage for the sake of her daughter, she bought two boys" [Niceta (James) & Aquila (John)"
(See references to Aquila in the New Testament) "and educated them, and had them in place of sons. And they being educated from their boyhood with Simon Magus, have learned all things concerning him. For such was their friendship, that they were associated with him in all things in which he wished to unite with them."

Is it a wonder that the Church as it did with the Dead Sea Scrolls has to resort to phoney dating to remove suspicion. Rather than face the problem with dealing with the implications of a whole new version of the early Church as described in Acts and Paul's epistles, the scholars and religious leaders have quickly pushed the writings later into the third or fourth century.

Once moved to a later century, it is easier to make the case that the content appears to be of the Ebonite origin. The Ebonites, who were active in the second to the fourth century, were condemned as heresy. Though the Ebonites have a strong similarity to Jewish Christianity, but after the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD and the crushing of the Bar_Kokhba revolt in 135 AD, there was not much left to be called Jewish-Christian. The Ebonites really began again from the dust of Jewish-Christianity and this sect's principles are clearly not contained in the Clementines.

Now that the Dead Sea Scrolls of 1947 and 1956 have come to light, it appears that a Jewish Essene faith did actually exist at Qumran. The efforts to try to place all the writings in Qumran to 150 BC are beginning to fail and more and more scholars are accepting that there is a similarity between that organization at Qumran and the early Christian Church.

Perhaps there was not a sudden flowering of Christianity because of Jesus, but maybe the evolution of Christianity had happened earlier as the Jewish and Essene began to merge in to Jewish-Essene before Jesus and then after Jesus to Jewish-Christian, then to Christianity. The philosophy presented in the Clementines clearly appears to be a struggle within the groups to define what there difference was between Jewish-Christian and Christian. On that basis alone, its philosophy has to be from the 1st Century.

What this discussion sets out to do is to arrive at and to prove the date at which the original philosophy and biographies written by Clement were merged into a larger moral story. If a date for the writings that we now possess can be shown to be within the first century, then the Clementines will need to be given more attention. Their information would therefore be as important as Acts in revealing the history of the church after the Crucifixion.

There are two important issues that need to be resolved first.

A justification for rejecting an early date for the Clementines is that the mother Mattidia (Matthidia) shows up in the time of the Emperor Trajan as Matidia (68-119) who had no children and treated his niece like a daughter. Matidia's daughter married the Emperor Hadrian and another daughter was named Faustina. Thus the scholars say that the Clementines were written during the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. However, this ignores the fact that Faustina is female name and is not contained in the Clementines and that the Faustus male name was present prior to the first century.

Of most importance is that James is not James the Just, but James, son of Alphaeus i.e. Jonathan Annas

One of the main reasons that the Clementine Recollections and Homilies have been dismissed as pseudo works is because they were believed to have been written by a later sect of Ebonites that were the remainder of the off-shoot of Christian Church led by James the Just, the younger brother of Jesus. (For a while James the had been included in the Church, but later was rejected.)

However all this comes from the confusion of the name "James" for James, the brother of Jesus also known as James the Just and James, James of Alphaeus, listed as one of the twelve disciples of Jesus (Matthew 10:1-4, Mark 3:13-19, Luke 6:12-16, and Acts 1:13). The word "Alphaeus" being used for Annas as his father. Annas had five sons all who became High Priests and Annas was also connected to Caiaphas, the High Priest who was responsible for Jesus' Crucifixion, as Caiaphas had married his daughter (John 18:13). His second son Jonathan Annas is the same as James of Alphaeus (in contradiction to the scholars who have tried in vain to decipher his name). This connection can be made by associating "Nathaniel" in the Gospel of John (John 1:43-51) with James of Alphaeus (Annas' son Jonathan) since both Nathaniel and Jonathan mean "God given". Jonathan can also be correlated with the pseudonym "Dositheus" in Clementine Recollections R.2.11. Dositheus who is credited as the founder of the Sadducee sect, also means "God given".

It can therefore be seen that Jonathan Annas was associated with Jesus, but was a Sadducee priest like his father and brothers. Matthew, his younger brother, was also a Sadducee priest listed as a disciple of Jesus and was writer of the Gospel of Matthew. It is important to understand the word "publican/tax collector", as it was used in the Gospels, for it connects three important colleagues of Jesus. "Publican" was used as a pun for priests being tax collectors of "church tithes". Matthew (Matthew 10:3) was referred to as a "publican/tax collector" and so was Jonathan being "Levi" in Mark 2:14 with the connection being "son of Alphaeus" to James/Jonathan (not Matthew - the bad scholarly assumption); also, so was Zacchaeus in Luke 19:2. Zacchaeus in the Clementines then connects with Ananus, the youngest son of Annas (See his biography here).

Jonathan was High Priest March - October 37 AD (His deposing is shown in Acts 7:1-60 using his name as Stephen - also corresponding to Clementine Recollections R.1:70,71 proving that it was a symbolic death). It is therefore more likely that the James whom Clement and Peter sent dispatches to was Jonathan Annas and not James the Just. This shows that earliest version of the Clementines had have been written before Jonathan Annas' death in December 57 AD under the instigation of the Roman procurator Felix (See Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews 20, 163-165).

The dating of the writing of the Clementines could not have been before Simon Magus and Peter/Paul split up causing the Schism of the Churches in 44 AD, thus making Simon Magus the bad guy. However, the philosophical content is clearly from an earlier date shortly after the Pentecost when the Jewish Christians were developing a unique identity as Christians.