clementines

Updated: June 21, 2025

Text: Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta, Vol. B. Constitutiones. A. The priority of the two varying accounts, in the Homilies and Recognitiones, of the same story is in much dispute, but this is a question of no importance in the present enquiry. The latest scholarship is of the opinion that "the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites."

George Robert Stowe Mead - Simon Magus

The array of witnesses examined runs thus: Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, Papias of Hierapolis, the Clementines, the Epistle to Diognetus, Basilides, Valentinus, Marcion, Tatian, Dionysius of Corinth, Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris, Athenagoras, Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, Celsus and the Canon of Muratori.

M. F. (Michael Ferrebee) Sadler - The Lost Gospel and Its Contents: Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself

But the theory that the Clementine writer is quoting from a document older than the two Synoptics, and indeed their common original, is excluded by the amount of matter that is common to the two Synoptics and either not found at all or found variantly in the Clementines. The coincidence between the Synoptics, we may assume, is derived from the fact that they both drew from a common original.

William Sanday - The Gospels in the Second Century: An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work Entitled 'Supernatural Religion'

The objection to the inference that the quotation is made from St. Mark, derived from the context in which it appears in the Clementines, is really quite nugatory. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the Gospel from which the Clementines quote would contain any such assertion.

William Sanday - The Gospels in the Second Century: An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work Entitled 'Supernatural Religion'

Whether the Recognitions or the Homilies came first in order of time is a question much debated among critics, and the even way in which the best opinions seem to be divided is a proof of the uncertainty of the data. The majority of critics assign the Clementines, in one form or the other, to the middle of the second century.

William Sanday - The Gospels in the Second Century: An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work Entitled 'Supernatural Religion'

The story of Simon in the Apostolic Constitutions is short and taken from the Acts, and to some extent from the Clementines, finishing up, however, with the mythical death of Simon at Rome, owing to the prayers of Peter. The details of this magical feat are given variously elsewhere. So end the most important of the legends.

George Robert Stowe Mead - Simon Magus