The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PAUL IN THK CLEMENTINES. 725
body, to observe the Mosaic Law as was done by St. Paul himself so far as he could do
BO without compromising the emancipa^ .-f the Gentiles until the fall of Jerusalem
rendered all such observance a mere mockery and sham. l If the Passover, the very central
ordinance of Mosaism, was rendered simply impossible, God had Himself demonstrated
that the aeon of the Law was closed. The withdrawal of the Church to Pella, caused by
a recollection of the warnings of Jesus, would look to the Jews like an unpatriotic
desertion of their cause ; and the frantic denunciations of the Mins, which date from
this epoch, were but signs of the gathering detestation of Jew for Christian which
culminated in the savage massacres by Bar-cochba of those Christians who refused to
apostatise and blaspheme. When the name of Jerusalem had given way to that of
.iElia Capitolina, and Christians wore allowed to live where no Jew might set his foot,
the Church of the new city became predominantly Gentile, and was for the first time
governed by a Gentile bishop. 2 It is not till after this period that we hear of two sects,
distinct from each other, but often confused. These were the Nazarenea and the
Ebionites. The NAZARENES were not in any way hostile to the work and memory of
Paul, and they differed from other Christians only in holding that the Law was still
binding on Jewish
" "
converts. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs a book
which, whether written by a Nazarene or not, expresses their general tenets so far as we
can gather them not only does not oppose the doctrines of St. Paul, but, though
written from the Judaso-Christian standpoint, puts into the mouth of Benjamin a
splendid eulogy of Paul, as one who is to arise from that tribe "beloved of the Lord,
listening to His voice, enlightening all the Gentiles with new knowledge." The
EBIONITES, on the other hand a powerful and zealous sect breathed the exact
spirit of Paul's Judaising enemies, and the views of many of them became deeply tinged
with the Gnostic tendencies of the more advanced Essenes. To this section of the
Ebionites we owe the forgeries known as the Clementine Homilies, the Clementine
Recognitions, extant in a Latin paraphrase of Rufinus, 3 and a spurious letter of Peter to
James. In the Homilies St. Paul is surreptitiously attacked in the guise of Simon
Magus. 4 The allusion to his reproof of St. Peter at Antioch is too plain to be overlooked,
and discredit is thrown on his doctrine, his revelations, and his independent attitude
towards James. In the letter of St. Peter he is still more severely, though still covertly
slandered, as "the enemy" whose teaching was antinomian and absurd, and who
calumniously asserted that St. Peter held one view and sanctioned another. In the
Recognitions these attacks do not appear, but "the enemy " sent by Caiaphas to arrest
St. Peter at Antioch, and who throws St. James down the Temple steps, is evidently
meant for St. Paul, and this notable story is believed to have been borrowed from a
prating fiction called the "Ascents of James," which is also the source of the venomous
calumny that Paul was a Gentile who had accepted circumcision in hopes of marrying
the High Priest's daughter, and had only apostatised from Mosaism when his hopes
5
were disappointed.
It is on trash of this kind, at once feeble and virulent, at once baseless and malignant,
that some have based the belief that there was deadly opposition between Paul and the
Twelve, and that his work was not fully recognised till the close of the second century.
The fact, however, is that these Ebionite slanders and forgeries are representative of none
but an isolated sect. Justin lived in Samaria in the earlier half of the second century,
and shows no trace of these views. Hegesippus was a Jewish Christian who travelled to
Rome in the middle of the second century, visiting many Christian Churches ; and
1
Griitz, Gesch. d. Jttden, iv. Ill *
Marcus, B.C. 132. Just. Mart. Apol. i. 81, p. T2.
* And partly in Syriac.
* The English reader may sea these passages translated in Banr'a First Three Centuries, i. pp
rfS.
*
Epiphan. Haerts, xxz. 16. Henan also refers to Massechta, Qtri