drawn as to their written source."(1) Critics have maintained very different and conflicting views regarding that source. Apologists, of course, assert that the quotations in the Homilies are taken from our Gospels only.(2) Others ascribe them to our Gospels, with a supplementary apocryphal work: the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel according to Peter.(3) Some, whilst admitting a subsidiary use of some of our Gospels, assert that the author of the Homilies employs, in preference, the Gospel according to Peter;(4) whilst others, recognizing also the similarity of the phenomena presented by these quotations with those of Justin's, conclude that the author does not quote our Gospels at all, but makes use of the Gospel according to Peter, or the Gospel according to the Hebrews.(5) Evidence permitting of such divergent conclusions manifestly cannot be of a decided character. We may affirm, however, that few of those who are
willing to admit the use of our Synoptics by the author of the Homilies along with other sources, make that concession on the strength of the absolute isolated evidence of the Homilies themselves, but they are generally moved by antecedent views on the point. In an inquiry like that which we have undertaken, however, such easy and indifferent judgment would obviously be out of place, and the point we have to determine is not whether an author may have been acquainted with our Gospels, but whether he furnishes testimony that he actually was in possession of our present Gospels and regarded them as authoritative.
We have already mentioned that the author of the Clementine Homilies never names the source from which his quotations are derived. Of these very numerous quotations we must again distinctly state that only two or three, of a very brief and fragmentary character, literally agree with our Synoptics, whilst all the rest differ more or less widely from the parallel passages in those Gospels. Some of these quotations are repeated more than once with the same persistent and characteristic variations, and in several cases, as we have already seen, they agree more or less closely with quotations of Justin from the Memoirs of the Apostles. Others, again, have no parallels at all in our Gospels, and even Apologists are consequently compelled to admit the collateral use of an apocryphal Gospel. As in the case of Justin, therefore, the singular phenomenon is presented of a vast number of quotations of which only one or two brief phrases, too fragmentary to avail as evidence, perfectly agree with our Gospels; whilst of the rest, which all vary more or less, some merely resemble combined passages of two Gospels, others merely contain the sense, some
present variations likewise found in other writers or in various parts of the Homilies are repeatedly quoted with the same variations, and others are not found in our Gospels at all. Such phenomena cannot be fairly accounted for by any mere theory of imperfect memory or negligence. The systematic variation from our Synoptics, variation proved by repetition not to be accidental, coupled with quotations which have no parallels at all in our Gospels, more naturally point to the use of a different Gospel. In no case can the Homilies be accepted as furnishing evidence even of the existence of our Gospels.
As it is impossible here to examine in detail all of the quotations in the Clementine Homilies, we must content ourselves with this distinct statement of their character, and merely illustrate briefly the different classes of quotations, exhausting, however, those which literally agree with passages in the Gospels. The most determined of recent Apologists do not afford us an opportunity of testing the passages upon which they base their assertion of the use of our Synoptics, for they simply assume that the author used them without producing instances.(1)
The first quotation agreeing with a passage in our Synoptics occurs in Hom. iii. 52: "And he cried, saying: Come unto me all ye that are weary," which agrees with the opening words of Matt. xi. 28, but the phrase does
1 Teschendorf only devotes a dozen linos, with a note, to
the Clemontinos, and only in connection with our fourth
Gospel, which shall hero-after have our attention. Wann
wurden u. s. w., p. 90. In the same way Canon Westcott
passes them over in a short paragraph, merely asserting the
allusions to our Gospels to be "generally admitted," and
only directly referring to one supposed quotation from Mark
which we shall presently examine, and one which he affirms
to be from the fourth Gospel. On the Canon, p. 251 f. [In
the 4th edition he has enlarged his remarks, p. 282 ff.]