correct and edifying elements
must have seemed to outweigh the objectionable. At any rate, the
historian who, until further advised, denies the existence of a Jewish
Christianity composed of the most contradictory elements, lacking
circumcision and national hopes, and bearing marks of Catholic and
therefore of Hellenic influence, judges more prudently than he who
asserts, solely on the basis of Romances which are accompanied by no
tradition and have never been the objects of assault, the existence of a
Jewish Christianity accommodating itself to Catholicism which is
entirely unattested.

11. Be that as it may, it may at least be regarded as certain that the
Pseudo-Clementines contribute absolutely nothing to our knowledge of the
origin of the Catholic Church and doctrine, as they shew at best in
their immediate sources a Jewish Christianity strongly influenced by
Catholicism and Hellenism.

12. They must be used with great caution even in seeking to determine
the tendencies and inner history of syncretistic Jewish Christianity. It
cannot be made out with certainty, how far back the first sources of the
Pseudo-Clementines date, or what their original form and tendency were.
As to the first point, it has indeed been said that Justin, nay, even
the author of the Acts of the Apostles, presupposes them, and that the
Catholic tradition of Peter, in Rome, and of Simon Magus, are dependent
on them (as is still held by Lipsius); but there is so little proof of
this adduced, that in Christian literature up to the end of the second
century (Hegesippus?) we can only discover very uncertain traces of
acquaintance with Jewish Christian historical narrative. Such
indications can only be found, to any considerable extent, in the third
century, and I do not mean to deny that the contents of the Jewish
Christian histories of the Apostles contributed materially to the
formation of the ecclesiastical legends about Peter. As is shewn in the
Pseudo-Clementines, these histories of the Apostles especially opposed
Simon Magus and his adherents (the new Samaritan attempt at a universal
religion), and placed the authority of the Apostle Peter against them.
But they also opposed the Apostle Paul, and seem to have transferred
Simonian features to Paul, and Pauline features to Simon. Yet it is also
possible that the Pauline traits found in the magician were the outcome
of the redaction, in so far as the whole polemic against Paul is here
struck o