David T. Runia has suggested that Eusebius’s source is Clement’s lost Hypotyposeis, which Eusebius cites in HE 2.16 for the tradition that Mark founded the Alexandrian church. However, as we saw in Ch. 3, Clement’s extant corpus contains no definite citations or remembrances from Philo’s historical treatises, and the Hypotyposeis are described as commentaries on the Christian scriptures. In that case, it is to be expected that they would shed further light on the composition of Mark’s Gospel, but would be less likely to deal with Peter’s encounters in Rome. Sabrina Inowlocki proposes Papias as an alternative source, noting that “both Papias and Clement of Alexandria seem to be Eusebius’s sources for Mark’s evangelization of Egypt.” I find J. Bruns’s suggestion of Hegesippus as the source to be the most probable, as Hegesippus is Eusebius’s most common source for information about the fate of the Jews subsequent to the crucifixion. Moreover, Andrew Carriker attests that the phrase λόγος ἔχει is often used to introduce material from Hegesippus. See Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature, 7; Inowlocki, “Interpretatio Christiana,” 320; Carriker, Eusebius’s Library, 64–5. [Jennifer Otto, Philo of Alexandria and the Construction of Jewishness 188, in notes 157–158]
Thursday, January 1, 2026
Clement, Hegesippus, and the “Burial-Places” Dossier: why Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis isn’t a medieval quirk
Every so often you bump into a line that looks too tidy to be “real history” and too specific to be pure invention. The little dossier that begins “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt” is one of those. On its face it reads like a late medieval crib-sheet: short notices assigning apostles and early disciples to tombs, cities, and martyrdom sites. Yet the same small unit keeps reappearing in multiple manuscript settings, and it repeatedly anchors itself with an attribution to Clement’s Hypotyposeis (specifically “in the fifth book”). That combination—wide manuscript diffusion plus a stable patristic hook—deserves to be taken seriously as evidence for transmission rather than dismissed as a scribal flourish.
1. What the dossier looks like when you strip away the codex-setting
Across witnesses, the dossier is basically a catalogue of where they suffered or where they were buried—apostles first, then a few post-apostolic figures. In the form I’ve been collecting, it includes (among other items) a Roman opening (“Peter and Paul in Rome”), an Alexandrian datum (“Mark in Alexandria, in Bucolis”), a Jerusalem martyrdom notice for a “Jacob(us)” linked to the temple, and the striking chronological notice:
Symeon/Simeon, son of Clopas … crucified in Jerusalem … at Trajan’s command, and tied to an episcopal succession after “James.”
Even before we ask “who wrote it,” those last two lines already point away from random medieval invention. “Son of Clopas,” “crucified,” “Trajan,” and the succession framing are exactly the kind of tightly packaged Jerusalem-church tradition we expect from the second-century stream behind Eusebius.
2. The key patristic backstop: Eusebius explicitly connects Clement’s James notice to Hegesippus
Eusebius preserves a Clementine note about two men named James, and—crucially—he reports Clement’s version with the same temple/pinnacle + club + burial near the temple constellation echoed (and slightly scrambled) in the later dossier tradition. Eusebius then immediately says that Hegesippus gives “the most accurate account” of James’s death.
That matters because it gives us a concrete mechanism: Clement is not an isolated originator here; he is already functioning (in Eusebius’s presentation) as an epitomator whose notice sits alongside—indeed, appears dependent on—the fuller Hegesippan narrative.
So when later Latin lists attribute a “temple” martyrdom line to “Clement in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis,” we are not dealing with a lone medieval fantasy. We are seeing the afterlife of a Clementine excerpt-type that Eusebius himself knew and explicitly set in relation to Hegesippus.
3. The Symeon “son of Clopas … crucified … under Trajan” line is straight Hegesippus in Eusebius
The Symeon tradition in Eusebius is also explicitly tied to Hegesippus: Symeon is presented as the one who succeeded James in Jerusalem, identified as “son of Clopas,” and said to have suffered martyrdom (crucifixion) under Trajan.
This is the “signature” set of data we've singled out. It is not merely similar in vibe; it is the same tradition-stream, with the same distinctive proper name and imperial dating. If a later dossier preserves that cluster while also tagging itself “Clement, Hypotyposeis V,” the most economical explanation is that Clement’s Hypotyposeis really did contain a compact succession/martyrdom catalogue drawing on Hegesippus’s Jerusalem material.
4. Why the “Jacob(us) Alphaei iuxta templum” confusion actually supports a Clement → excerpt → scribal drift story
The point about Jacob Alphaeus is important: the famous “thrown from the temple/pinnacle” martyrdom story belongs, in the standard patristic stream, to James the Just, not to the apostle “James son of Alphaeus.”
But notice what Eusebius tells us Clement was doing: Clement explicitly distinguished two Jameses—a perfect precondition for later excerpting to go wrong. Once a short list is detached from its explanatory prose, a scribe (or compiler) who wants everything to be “one of the Twelve” can easily slide the temple-martyrdom notice under the best available apostolic label, “Jacobus Alphaei.” In other words, the Alphaeus misassignment looks like the kind of secondary harmonization you get when a patristic note is reduced to catalogue-form and then “corrected” into an apostolic register.
This also dovetails with our final claim: later compilers (and even very competent ones) can preserve the data while losing the identification logic. In that sense, the confusion is not evidence against patristic origin; it is exactly the sort of error we’d predict if an early dossier were repeatedly copied as a stand-alone list.
5. Clement and Hegesippus travel together in Eusebius’s mind—not as rivals, but as corroborating authorities
In Book III, Eusebius treats Clement’s Hypotyposeis and Hegesippus as mutually confirming sources on Roman episcopal succession after the apostles (“Clement has set it down; Hegesippus agrees”). That is not trivial. It shows Eusebius had a mental category in which (a) Clement wrote “succession” material in the Hypotyposeis, and (b) Hegesippus is a check on that same kind of material.
Once you see that, a “burial/martyrdom/succession” dossier attributed to Clement no longer looks odd. It looks like a natural cousin of the very Clementine material Eusebius already knew—material he was comfortable pairing with Hegesippus.
6. Epiphanius as an additional witness to the independent circulation of Hegesippus (and the hazards of excerpting)
Lawlor notes that Epiphanius appears to have had access to Hegesippus’s “Memoirs” independently and in a form that (at least in places) could preserve readings better than Eusebius’s. Even if that does not by itself prove the Clement dossier, it supports the broader point: these traditions did circulate and were excerpted and re-embedded in later works, and not always through a single Eusebian bottleneck.
7. So what does it show, in terms of transmission and “branches”?
One branch is an early “catalogue” tradition (already visible in high-medieval witnesses) that transmits the dossier as a free-standing laterculus of apostolic burial places and martyrdoms, with a persistent patristic tag to “Clement, Hypotyposeis V.”
A second branch is the “schoolbook-appendix” tradition in which the same dossier is copied as an add-on at the back of larger didactic manuscripts (the Urbino/Comestor case is the cleanest example). In that setting, the list behaves like detachable paratext: something a reader or scribe thinks is useful enough to tack onto a standard work, thereby giving it a new material home while keeping the same opening incipit and the same Clementine explicit.
Across both branches, the content that is hardest to explain as medieval invention—the Symeon/Clopas/Trajan cluster and the temple-martyrdom cluster—lines up precisely with what Eusebius preserves as Hegesippus and what Eusebius explicitly relates to Clement.
8. The bottom-line argument
Put bluntly: the dossier is not compelling because “Clement’s name is attached to it,” but because the pieces that matter most are diagnostic Hegesippus—and Eusebius already shows us Clement transmitting Hegesippus-like Jerusalem material in compressed form.
So when multiple manuscript traditions preserve a catalogue that includes (i) Peter and Paul in Rome, (ii) Mark in Alexandria, (iii) a “James at/near the temple” martyrdom notice, and (iv) Symeon son of Clopas crucified in Jerusalem under Trajan, and when that catalogue ends by pointing to “Clement in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis,” the best historical explanation is not “late medieval quirk.” It is: an excerpted Clementine dossier, ultimately dependent (at least for the Jerusalem cluster) on Hegesippus, copied and recopied as a convenient reference list—sometimes accurately, sometimes with harmonizing slippage like ‘Alphaeus.’
The Clementine “Bucolis” Notice and the Medieval Afterlife of an Apostolic Laterculus
In the codex Marcianus lat. 21, 10 (13th century), according to J. Valentinelli (Bibl. ms. ad S. Marci Venetiarum, Codd. Lat., vol. V, Venice 1872, p. 214), there stands—after Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica—a list, written by another hand, of the burial places of the apostles, in which Clement of Alexandria is cited at the end. Zahn therefore had it printed as Fragment 12 of the Hypotyposeis. The same list, in identical wording, is also found in codex Paris lat. 9562 (12th–13th century), fol. 142v; R. A. Lipsius discusses this manuscript in the same work (vol. I, p. 214 f., and Supplement fascicle p. 17). The list reads, according to Valentinelli, Lipsius, and Schermann (Propheten- und Apostellegenden, p. 296, and Prophetarum vitae fabulosae, p. 213), as follows (P = Paris, M = Marcianus):
Peter and Paul are buried at Rome.
Andrew [is buried] at Patras, a city of Achaia.
James [son] of Zebedee [is buried] in the citadel of Marmarica.
John [is buried] at Ephesus.
Philip, with his daughters, [is buried] at Hierapolis of Asia.
Bartholomew [is buried] at Albone, a city of Greater Armenia.
Thomas [is buried] at Calamia, a city of India.
Matthew [is buried] in the mountains of the Parthians.
Mark [is buried] at Alexandria in the Bucolis.
James of Alphaeus [is buried] beside the temple.
Thaddaeus and Judas [are buried] at Berytus of the Edessenes.
Simon Cleophas, who is also Judas, after James the bishop, at the age of 120 years, was crucified at Jerusalem, at the command of Trajan.
Titus [is buried] in Crete.
Crescens [is buried] in Gaul.
The eunuch of Queen Candace, one of the seventy apostles, suffered [martyrdom] in Arabia, which is called “Felix,” as Clement says in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis, that is, of the “Information(s).” [Stählin XXXIV]
Every so often a line turns up in a manuscript catalogue that looks almost too convenient for modern debates. One such line is the terse notice, that Clement of Alexandria (i.e. the attributed author of the Letter to Theodore discovered at Mar Saba) said “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” — “Mark [is buried] at Alexandria in the Bucolis.” What makes it more arresting is that, in several witnesses, the list that contains this line closes with a claim of authority: “ut ait Clemens in quinto libro hypotyposeon, id est informationum” — “as Clement says in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis, that is, the ‘Information(s).’” It is tempting to treat such a Clementine tag as a scribal flourish or a late medieval fiction. The surviving evidence, however, points in a different direction. Whatever we decide about the ultimate value of the attribution, the formula itself is not a quirky one-off. It belongs to a transmissible textual unit with a demonstrable manuscript history.
The unit in question is a short Latin dossier on the burial (and in some cases martyrdom) locations of apostles and a few associated disciples. Its incipit is stable: “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt.” It proceeds through brief entries — “Andreas Patrae civitate Achaiae,” “Ioannes in Epheso,” “Philippus… in Hierapoli Asiae,” and, crucially, “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis.” In at least one edited witness it concludes with the Clementine warrant cited above, tying the list (or at least its final notice) to a supposed statement by Clement in book five of the Hypotyposeis.
An early stratum of this transmission is visible in Theodor Schermann’s edition of what he calls a “Laterculus quidam anonymus.” Two manuscript witnesses are explicitly identified there: A = Paris, lat. 9562 (saec. XII–XIII, fol. 112v) and B = Marcianus 21, 10 (saec. XIII). In that laterculus the line “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” stands squarely within the list, and the Clementine tag appears as an inherited closing formula: “Eunuchus Candacis reginae… in Arabia quae felix est, ut ait Clemens in quinto libro hypotyposeon, id est informationum.” The point is not that Schermann has suddenly uncovered Clement’s lost Hypotyposeis; rather, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a Latin list of apostolic burial places was already circulating in a form that carried this “Clement, Hypotyposeis book five” credential as part of the text’s own apparatus.
A second carrier, and the one that helps explain wide diffusion, is the manuscript tradition of Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica. Friedrich Stegmüller’s repertory of medieval biblical commentaries records a recurring Comestor-associated attachment: a chapter identified as “Cap. 121: Ubi apostoli sepulti sint,” whose incipit is again “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt,” and whose explicit again invokes Clement and the “fifth book of the Hypotyposeis / Informationes.” Stegmüller’s listings indicate multiple codices in which this Comestor-plus-laterculus package appears (Aarau Wettingen; Milan Ambrosiana; Munich Clm witnesses; Naples; Yale; New York, among others). Even where the repertory does not quote every internal line of the list, the combination of a distinctive incipit and a distinctive Clementine explicit makes it clear that we are dealing with the same dossier migrating into a scholastic “host text” with enormous copying reach.
This context is essential for reading a witness such as Vatican, Urb. lat. 386 (olim 629), a fifteenth-century parchment codex (330×232 mm, ff. ii + 382). The catalog description is explicit: the volume contains Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica, and then, on folio 381, “subnectuntur… nonnulla de locis, in quibus passi aut sepulti sunt apostoli et aliquot discipuli” — “there are appended some items about the places in which the apostles and a few disciples suffered or were buried.” The appended dossier begins “Petrus et Paulus Romae sepulti sunt” and ends “ut ait Clemens in quinto libro ypoposeon (!) idest informationum.” The cataloger’s exclamation point after the spelling ypoposeon is a caution about form, not a denial of what the manuscript transmits: the Clementine warrant is present and is presented as the closing credential of the dossier.
Put differently, Urb. lat. 386 is not best read as an isolated scribe’s fantasy about Clement. It is a late witness to a piece of paratext that had already achieved stability and portability: the apostolic burial laterculus. The same incipit and the same explicit, appearing in multiple codices across centuries and libraries, is precisely the kind of evidence that turns “quirk” into “tradition.”
At this point, the transmission can be sketched in two broad branches, not as a speculative stemma but as a sober account of carriers.
First, there is an independent “Laterculus” line, attested at least by Paris lat. 9562 (s. XII–XIII) and Marcianus 21, 10 (s. XIII), where the list plainly includes “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” and where the Clement/Hypotyposeis tag appears as a closing formula.
Second, there is a Comestor-associated line, where the laterculus is transmitted as a chapter or appended dossier attached to the Historia scholastica (“Ubi apostoli sepulti sint”). Because Comestor’s work was copied widely for medieval instruction, this attachment functions like a textual multiplier: once the dossier becomes “Comestor-adjacent,” it acquires new routes of replication, new copying-centers, and new opportunities for minor local modification — while retaining a remarkably consistent opening and closing.
The distinction matters for how the evidence is used. None of these manuscripts provides a direct witness to Clement’s Hypotyposeis as a continuous patristic text. The surviving Greek Hypotyposeis is not in view here; what is in view is a medieval Latin dossier that appeals to Clement’s name as an authority. That is a common medieval strategy: short topographical or hagiographical notices are stabilized by being anchored to a venerable author, even when the ultimate pedigree is opaque. The Clement tag may reflect a genuine ancient snippet mediated through earlier collections, or it may be an early medieval authority-label that attached itself to the list and then hardened into tradition. The manuscripts, by themselves, cannot adjudicate that question. What they can adjudicate is whether the tag is a late eccentricity. It is not.
This is why the “Mark in Alexandria in Bucolis” line deserves to be treated with methodological care. It is neither a modern conjecture nor a solitary fifteenth-century curiosity. It is part of a laterculus that is already securely attested in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and that is demonstrably portable across codicological settings. The more interesting historical question, therefore, is not “why did one scribe say this?” but “when and why did this dossier — and this Clementine credential — become attached to the apostolic burial tradition in Latin?”
For readers who want a practical takeaway: if you are studying medieval reception of apostolic topography and the construction of “patristic authority” in miniature, this dossier is a textbook case. A short list, an easily remembered incipit, a gravitating closing authority-tag, and a high-diffusion host text (Comestor) that propagates it. In such a system, “Marcus Alexandriae in Bucolis” is not an isolated claim; it is a datapoint in the life of a text that medieval copyists clearly regarded as worth carrying forward.
And that, in turn, is the real contribution of the manuscript evidence. It shifts the discussion from authenticity-proving to transmission-mapping: identifying the textual unit, tracing its carriers, and recognizing that the Clement/Hypotyposeis attribution is itself a tradition with a history — a history that can be followed, and tested, manuscript by manuscript.
Thoughts After a Trip to Italy
I wanted to transform my blog into a more relevant platform. I can't deny that I am writing in an age where few people read and even fewer people think. Nevertheless, I also can't ignore the fact that humanity is in a seemingly never ending pursuit of "content."
I have my biases of course. As crazy as maniacal as it may sound, I have a pseudo-gnostical prejudice that these spiritually ugly ignoramuses who endlessly scroll furiously through their feeds are blindly looking for "the truth" like moths congregating at triggered light bulb.
I also can't deny that for better or worse I did spend the majority of my time on earth - perhaps even "every waking hour" - on a pursuit of the truth. Whether or not, of course these lines ever intersect (i.e. my pursuit of the truth and the attainment of "truthfulness" is a matter of opinion or even indifference. But as I approach the end of my life, I find myself in the unusual position of (a) being in the habit of scribbling "things in blind spaces" after (b) being in some "truth-seeking enterprise" or another and (c) having establish some sort of audience whether it be 10 or 10,000 (undoubtedly "10" is the more likely number).
As a man of some integrity - how much is again up for debate - I can't say this enterprise has entirely "useful." I see most people around have surpassed me in terms of worldly achievements. I don't think I am a particularly nice person although I can have moments of "kindness," "sensitivity" and what not. I am not sure I was a particularly wonderful husband or father. I look back and can't even remember what the "principles" that guided these enterprises were for me or still are (which is always a bad sign).
So why should anyone care that I have uncovered "the truth" about the origins of Christianity? On a recent trip to Rome, Italy I was struck by "Jewishness" (being asked to form a minyan at the great synagogue of the city) the day after I actually made my way to St Peter's basilica (which seemed to me to resemble a precursor for an amusement park more than a serious religious temple).
In the Jewish synagogue my immediate impressions were the austerity of the Jewish religious expression. It was a "big synagogue" and nothing more. I was struck by how few of the visitors to the Christian shrine were aware of the "faux" stylism of St Peter's. They literally tore down a more original structure to make the essentially gaudy present day version of the site. The statues weren't ancient. They were imitations of antiquity and that's what struck me about most of the sites of Rome. There was a conscious attempt at tourism here since the eighteenth century.
This was driven home when on the third day of my trip to the city I visited the Basilica of St Paul "Outside of the Walls." Here also we have a more or less "modern" (from the perspective of antiquity) attempt to rebuild the "temple to Paul." In this case a careless plumber burned the original wooden structure down to the ground. Apparently obedient Catholics were obliged to visit three or four of these places of pilgrimages so I was underestimated the crowd size when I visited.
I knew that Gaius of Rome mentioned this site alongside the ancient precursor to St Peter - both in the exact place that they currently stand. That is impressive. But I couldn't help think that in the descriptions of Gaius of Rome there was something of a "Pauline" echo present. Gaius was "the bishop to the Gentiles" which suggests to me at least that he mentions the Martyrium of St Paul "Outside the Walls" alongside St Peter's because he was the bishop or presbyter of this Pauline site.
Given the Gaius was such an anomaly in antiquity - famously rejecting the Johannine literary corpus (both gospel and apocalypse) - it is difficult not to imagine some sort of connection with "Marcionism" the likely originally separate "Pauline Church" that dominated the Christian landscape in antiquity. Why does Gaius reject the Gospel of John for instance? This has never been explained by scholarship nor the parallel "Alogoi" tradition mentioned by the ancient heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis (who held similar views but seem to be spread across the Empire in the late second and early third centuries).
There is so much that we don't know about ancient Christianity, and even with all my "truth seeking" I likely will never be able to answer adequately. Nevertheless by physically standing in the space that was devoted to Paul I couldn't help but note a parallel with the cult of St Mark in Alexandria. Both the martyriums of Mark in Alexandria and Paul in Rome were physically built "outside the walls" of their respective cities. In the case of the martyrium of St Mark the attestation was first made by Clement of Alexandria both in this Letter to Theodore and in his Hypotyposeis.
This "Cow Pasture" where the martyrium of St Mark was located was a virtual "wilderness" region which likely appealed the Christian religion to the kinds of people who might not have been welcomed within the walls of Alexandria proper. The pagan critic of Christianity Celsus makes reference to the link between Christianity and criminality and I also believe Alexandria and Egypt.
But as I stood in the former martyrium of St Paul outside the walls of the city of Rome proper a lot of questions that always puzzled me when reading Gaius of Rome manifest themselves to me again. Why were there two separate martyriums of Peter and Paul when our earliest source about Roman Christianity - Hegesippus - presents the Roman Church as a twin pairing of "Peter and Paul" - a virtual Romulus and Remus redivivus? All the stories of the deaths of Peter and Paul in the apocryphal literature have them die together or within a day of one another. The festal calendar mirrors this by having the "feast day of Peter and Paul" as one day and also the "day of Paul" immediately follow.
This very feast day of "Peter and Paul" is itself the traditional day that pagan Romans celebrated Romulus and Remus? Why does Hegesippus so consciously pass on "Peter and Paul" as the heads of the Roman Church in this very Roman way? The answer here is discernable. Hegesippus was undoubtedly a Latin corruption of "Josephus" who wrote his chronicle which contained the Roman episcopal list found in Eusebius (and imperfectly copied out by Irenaeus) on the 900th anniversary of the founding of Rome. This is why Clement refers to a chronographer "Josephus the Jew" establishing his information on "the tenth year of Antoninus Pius" matching as it does Epiphanius's source "Hegesippus."
147 CE was the anniversary of the founding of Rome which was remembered as a massively important spectacle in antiquity.
My question standing in what is left of the Martyrium of St Paul is why - if Hegesippus as early as 147 CE established the inseparability of "Peter and Paul" as early as the middle of the second century CE were the "remembrances" of the physical bodies of each martyr spread so far across the city of Rome? This originally suggested to me the possibility that the Marcionites were vindicated by their "separate" Church of Paul. For why else wouldn't some subsequent Pope like Callixtus have simply moved Paul's body to St Peter's? Clearly the physical "separateness" of Peter and Paul were well established in Roman Christianity despite Hegesippus's "fake" attempt to bring them to together.
But then another thought struck me when I was standing in the martyrium. What if the martyrium of St Paul "Outside the Walls" of Rome was itself a conscious imitation of the martyrium of St Mark in the Boucolia (i.e. "outside the walls" of Alexandria? The thinking here is that the New Testament canon itself can't breach the subject of the death of Paul. There is a hint that Paul ends up in Rome and the Ignatian literature created (according to Lucius of Samosata) sometime in the late second century (likely with the help of Irenaeus) reinforces that in a vaguely Markan way (i.e. being dragged like an animal or by animals in a spectacle).
The point of course is that Paul should be the ultimate martyr. He speaks of his stigmata and in ways that argue for him being "like Christ" or "in Christ" or even as Christ and yet something prevented second and third century mythmakers from spelling out the death explicitly. What if the reason for this silence was that Roman Christianity as such was always reinventing older myths in this case from other places?
What I mean is that in the same way as St Peter's and St Paul's was always reinventing itself in a kind of "fake" attempt to make itself "seem" ancient, the Roman Papacy was itself a conscious plundering of Alexandrian Christianity. Some time in the fourth century the Bishop of Rome appropriated the tradition title of the Alexandrian Papa. This is a historical fact. This isn't some "idea" that popped into my imagination. The "Pope" was originally the term associated with Egypt was taken over by Rome as part of a broader post-Nicene reformation of Christianity.
My thought was that perhaps the building blocks for this appropriation were already established in Gaius of Rome's role as "bishop of the nations" at the martyrium of St Paul. From what authority did Gaius utter his rejection of the Johannine corpus? He must have been "equal" or greater to the contemporary bishop of Peter who presumably accepted the fourfold canon of Irenaeus which included the gospel of John as the fourth or last gospel.
This martyrium of St Paul built outside of the walls might have been a conscious imitation of the martyrium of St Mark which we know existed at least at this time by Clement of Alexandria. Paul would then have been a "code" of some sort for Mark or used interchangeably with that name. It is also worth noting that in the oldest Latin explanations of the name of "Paul" - entirely separate from the narrative of Acts - sees "Paul" as a Hebrew title of some sort, most likely Pele or "Wonder." I think there was a separate Church of Paul remembered in some ways as "Marcionite" or "or Marcion" but in other places as "of Mark" or Marcion.
All of which makes my subsequent visit to Venice on the same trip so important. The last time I had visited Venice in the winter, it was easy to get to a ticket to see the throne (I was flown there by National Geographic as part of an attempt to make a documentary). This time when I visited I couldn't get it. The tickets were sold out (even though it wasn't nearly as busy as Venice gets in the summer). Standing outside the church, unable to see the object which was the subject of my first academic paper, I was struck by the outer murals which depicted the stealing of the body (and the treasures) of St Mark from Africa. This was the paradigm for the presence of the Christian religion in Italy only half a millenium later.
The Romans weren't a particularly original people. They were very good at imitation. Roman literature began as Greek imitation, Roman art drew heavily on Greek precedents. Roman historiography started in Greek, Roman drama and poetry were modeled on Greek genres. The Roman adoption of Greek mythology and gods is well attested.
Maybe the same thing is true about Christianity, our inherited religion, only from the specific African Greek culture of Alexandria.
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Is It Only That Morton Smith Was Gay?
Bottom Line
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
The Beginning of the End of the Secret Mark Conspiracy Theory
‘Peter and Paul are buried at Rome. Andrew [is buried] at Patrae, a city of Achaia. James of Zebedee [is buried] in the citadel of Marmarica. John [is buried] at Ephesus. Philip with his daughters [is buried] at Hierapolis of Asia. Bartholomew [is buried] at Albone, a city of Greater Armenia. Thomas [is buried] at Calamia, a city of India. Matthew [is buried] in the mountains of the Parthians. Mark [is buried] at Alexandria in the Bucolis. James of Alphaeus [is buried] beside the temple. Thaddaeus and Judas [are buried] at Berytus of the Edessenes. Simon Cleophas, who is also called Judas—after James bishop for 120 years—was crucified at Jerusalem by order of Trajan. Titus [is buried] in Crete. Crescens [is buried] in Gaul.’ [Then comes:] “The eunuch of Queen Candace, one of the Seventy apostles, [was] in Arabia, which is called ‘Happy’ [Arabia]; he suffered [martyrdom], as Clement says in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis, that is, of the ‘Instructions’.”
Morton Smith on the claim that Mark came to Alexandria, see Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark p 27:
The tradition that Mark came to Alexandria does not appear in the preserved works of Clement of Alexandria, but Clement and Papias were probably the sources from which it was drawn by Eusebius of Caesarea (HE II.16). The φασίν that now stands in the first sentence of II.16, if not used impersonally, should refer to Clement and Papias, who were named as the sources of information in the preceding sentence. [C.M. considers this suggestion concerning the subject of φασίν plausible. J.M., however, argued that because “we have no tradition … about Mark’s connection with Alexandria before Eusebius (HE II.16),” this letter therefore depends on Eusebius.]
Friday, December 19, 2025
The "Clement" of the List of the Apostles Can't Reasonably Have Been Suggested to Have Been Clement of Rome
Simon Cleophas qui et Judas, post Jacobum episc. CXX annorum crucifixus est in Jerusalem, Traiano mandante.
Thaddaeus et Judas in Britio Edessenorum
Thursday, December 18, 2025
The Parallel Between Clement's Stromateis Book 1 and the Didache
In Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.20.100.5, the line that corresponds directly to the Didache is:
«φησὶ γοῦν· υἱέ, μὴ γίνου ψεύστης· ὁδηγεῖ γὰρ τὸ ψεῦσμα πρὸς τὴν κλοπήν.»
In the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) 3.5 the line is:
«τέκνον μου, μὴ γίνου ψεύστης, ἐπειδὴ ὁδηγεῖ τὸ ψεῦσμα εἰς τὴν κλοπήν...»
In English: “My child, do not be a liar, because lying leads to theft.”
What Lipsius, Zahn and Harnack Thought About the "Abbreviated" List of the Apostles from "the Fifth Book of the Hypotyposeis" in the Codex Marcianus and Related Literature
What follows are the basic, checkable facts about the “abbreviated List of the Apostles” (the one that includes the line “Mark the apostle / Mark at Alexandria”) and why three German scholars—Lipsius, Zahn, and Harnack—are constantly invoked when modern writers try to connect that list with Clement of Alexandria’s lost Hypotyposeis, especially Book Five.
The starting point is that there exists a short, itinerary-style catalogue of apostolic missions and burials (e.g., “Peter and Paul at Rome… Andrew at Patras… Mark at Alexandria… Thaddaeus and Judas in Britio of the Edessenes…”) which later transmission associates with Clement. In the late nineteenth-century German discussion, this catalogue is treated not as an “apostolic romance,” but as a bare summary—precisely the kind of thing that could be excerpted, recopied, and reattached to different authorial names.
Richard Adelbert Lipsius is important because he explicitly treats the “Clementine” label as a feature of transmission rather than a guarantee of Clement’s authorship. His basic methodological point, made in his Ergänzungsheft to the Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, is that Clement’s citation in Stromateis (1.20.100) does not prove Clement used the Egyptian church-order work commonly called the “Apostolic Church Order,” because the relevant line also occurs in the newly recovered Didache.
From there Lipsius argues that the apostle-catalogue prefixed to that church-order tradition—the “Apostelverzeichnis” and the little narrative of an apostolic meeting before dispersal—derives from an independent source and only later becomes the template by which editors distribute canons among apostles.
The key factual implication is straightforward: in Lipsius’s model, later scribes and compilers really did connect such lists with “Clement,” but that connection is itself a historical phenomenon of pseudo-Clementine church-order literature, not a proof that the list is Clement’s own composition.
The second pillar is Theodor Zahn. In the same Lipsius material, Zahn is singled out as the scholar who insists that at least part of this apostolic-list material represents a genuine fragment of Clement’s Hypotyposeis. Lipsius names Zahn’s argument directly: Zahn (in Forschungen III) wants to recognize here “a real fragment from the Hypotyposeis (Fragment 10).”
Lipsius rejects Zahn’s way of reading the Eusebian evidence, specifically calling it “simply not true” that Eusebius explicitly testifies Clement named Sosthenes as one of the Seventy in Book Five.
But the fact that matters for the “abbreviated list” question is that Zahn’s position exists in a precise, defined form: Zahn is the one arguing that the Clementine ascription is not merely a later flourish; it preserves genuine Clementine material from Book Five.
The third name—Adolf von Harnack—enters because he explicitly built on Zahn’s discussion when working with newly recovered fragments of the Hypotyposeis. In the tradition represented by your English quotation, Harnack is presented as having noticed that Zahn’s Forschungen contained a “quotation relating to the tombs of the Apostles,” claimed to be derived from the Hypotyposeis, and then focusing on one peculiarly diagnostic place-name: “Britio Edessenorum.” Harnack’s published suggestion (as reported there) is that “Britio” could be misread by an early medieval scribe as an abbreviation pointing toward “Britannio/Britanniae,” helping explain later Western confusions about a “Lucius” and “Britain.” The historical claim attached to that observation is that “Britio” fits the concrete Edessene context (the Birtha/citadel associated with Abgar IX) and is therefore better explained as early, local, and technical—rather than as a medieval invention. That is the factual basis for why later writers say Harnack saw the list as genuinely anchored in the Clementine period: if the list carries “Britio Edessenorum” as a living Edessene toponym, it plausibly belongs in the late second-/early third-century informational world that Clement’s Hypotyposeis could have drawn upon.
How does “Mark the apostle” fit into this?
The crucial distinction is between two different “Mark problems” that are often blurred. One stream of evidence is lists of the Twelve where later manuscripts actually insert “Mark” into the numbered apostolic sequence; Lipsius documents that phenomenon in an Athos witness (Vatopedi 635), explicitly saying the list is in shorter form and includes “insertion of Marcus between Matthew and James of Alphaeus.”
That is not the same thing as the abbreviated itinerary list. The abbreviated list’s “Mark” line is typically of the “Mark at Alexandria” type, functioning as a coordinate within a geography-of-apostles catalogue. The shared point is that both kinds of lists are transmitted under “Clementine” headings in later collections; the dispute among the Germans is whether that Clementine label is merely traditional packaging (Lipsius), or whether a real Clementine core survives behind the packaging (Zahn, and—via Zahn—Harnack’s willingness to treat at least parts of the tradition as early).
So the sober, public conclusion, based on what these three scholars actually contribute, is this.
Lipsius provides the framework: apostolic lists and church-order texts are repeatedly transmitted under Clement’s name, but that fact shows a history of pseudo-Clementine attribution and editorial reuse, not automatic authenticity.
Zahn provides the counter-claim: within that transmitted material there is, at least in his judgement, a genuine fragment from Clement’s Hypotyposeis (Book Five), and the abbreviated apostolic catalogue is to be read as a witness to that lost Clementine content.
Harnack’s contribution, as it is invoked in the “Britio” argument, is the historical plausibility test: a technical Edessene place-name (“Britio”) sitting inside the catalogue behaves like early information that later scribes could misunderstand; that favors an early origin for the list’s toponymy and makes it at least plausible that the list belongs to the Clementine-era dossier of apostolic lore rather than being a purely medieval construction.
Those are the facts that can be said without turning the issue into a loyalty test. The remaining question—whether the abbreviated “Mark the apostle / Mark at Alexandria” notice itself stood in Clement’s Book Five or is a later condensation attached to Clement’s name—remains exactly where the Germans left it: Zahn presses “yes,” Lipsius presses “no” (or at least “not proven”), and Harnack is cited as treating the “Britio” toponym as a strong reason to take the Clementine-period connection seriously.
Lipsius (Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden: Ergänzungsheft, Braunschweig: C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, 1890) Makes Clear that Clement References the Source of the "List of the Apostles" Already at the Beginning of the Stromateis
Zu Band I. Zu S. 15 Z. 14 ff. Die ganze Untersuchung über die διδαχή (διδασκαλία), διατάξεις oder διαταγαὶ τῶν ἀποστόλων, von welcher Schrift die διδασκαλία τῶν ἀποστόλων (die Grundschrift der ersten 6 Bücher der Constitutionen) streng unterschieden werden muss, ist seit der Wiederauffindung der alten διδαχή τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων in ein neues Stadium getreten. Wir wissen jetzt, dass nicht die unter dem Namen αἱ διαταγαὶ αἱ διὰ Κλήμεντος bekannte ägyptische Schrift — jetzt gewöhnlich als apostolische Kirchenordnung bezeichnet —, sondern die alte διδαχή τῶν ἀποστόλων die Grundschrift der ersten 32 Kapitel des siebenten Buches der Constitutionen war. Die von Clemens Str. I, 20, 100 citirte Stelle, aus welcher man bisher eine Benutzung der apost. Kirchenordnung durch den alexandrinischen Kirchenlehrer schliessen musste, findet sich auch in der διδαχή (3, 5). Wie beide Schriften sich zu der Schrift von den „beiden Wegen“ verhalten, kann hier nicht näher untersucht werden. Sicher ist aber, dass das der apost. Kirchenordnung vorangeschickte Apostelverzeichnis und die mit demselben in Zusammenhang stehende Erzählung von einer Zusammenkunft der Apostel vor ihrer Trennung zum Zwecke Anordnungen für die ganze Kirche zu erlassen, aus einer selbständigen, sicherlich über den Schluss des 2. Jahrh. hinausreichenden Quelle geschöpft ist und dass erst nach Anleitung dieser Quelle die Vertheilung der verschiedenen Kanones unter die einzelnen Apostel vorgenommen wurde. Vgl. auch Harnack, die Lehre der zwölf Apostel S. 193 ff. Zu S. 20 Z. 10. 227 Z. 3. Der Name Judas Thomas ist auch in die von Cureton herausgegebene syrische Uebersetzung der Evangelien zu Joh. 14, 22 eingedrungen, s. Tischendorf ed. VIII zur Stelle. Bäthgen (Evangelienfragmente. Der griech. Text des Cureton’schen Syrers wiederhergestellt. Leipzig 1886) gibt dort die Rückübersetzung: λέγει αὐτῷ Ἰούδας Θωμᾶς. Schwerlich hat aber so eine griech. Handschrift gelesen. Zu S. 22 Z. 1 v. u. Von Epiphanios besitzen wir drei Verzeichnisse; ausser dem im Texte genannten haer. 79, 3 noch zwei fast gleichlautende in der dem Panarion vorgeschickten ἐνδημία Χριστοῦ und in der ἀνακεφαλαίωσις des Panarion. Das Verzeichnis in der ἐνδημία Χριστοῦ (I, 336 sq. Dindorf; I, 50 C Petav.) lautet folgendermassen: Σίμωνα Πέτρον, Ἀνδρέαν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ, Ἰάκωβον καὶ Ἰωάννην, τοὺς υἱοὺς Ζεβεδαίου, οὓς πάλαι ἐξελέξατο, Φίλιππον καὶ Βαρθολομαῖον, Ματθαῖον, Θωμᾶν τε καὶ Ἰούδαν καὶ Θαδδαῖον, Σίμωνα τὸν ζηλωτήν. Ἰούδας γὰρ ὁ Ἰσκαριώτης, εἰ καὶ πρότερον ἐν τοῖς δώδεκα ἐψηφίσθη, προδότης γενόμενος ἀπεσβέσθη τοῦ ἁγίου τῶν ἀποστόλων καταλόγου. ἀπέστειλε δὲ καὶ ἄλλους ἑβδομήκοντα δύο μαθητὰς, ἐξ ὧν ἦσαν οἱ ἑπτὰ οἱ ἐπὶ τῶν χηρῶν τεταγμένοι, Στέφανος, Φίλιππος, Πρόχορος, Νικάνορ, Τίμων, Παρμενᾶς καὶ Νικόλαος, πρὸ τούτων δὲ Ματθίας ὁ ἀντὶ Ἰούδα συγκαταριθμηθεὶς μετὰ τῶν ἀποστόλων, μετὰ τούτους δὲ τοὺς ἑπτὰ καὶ Ματθίαν τὸν πρὸ αὐτῶν, Μάρκον, Λουκᾶν, Ἰούστον, Βαρνάβαν καὶ Ἀνανίαν, Ῥοῦφον, Νιγῆρα καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα δύο. μετ’ αὐτοὺς δὲ ἐξέλεξεν καὶ σὺν αὐτοῖς Παῦλον τὸν ἅγιον ἀπόστολον … Beinahe wörtlich ebenso in der ἀνακεφαλαίωσις (I, 240 sq. Dindorf; II, 138 A Petav.), nur mit ganz geringen stilistischen Unterschieden (statt Ματθαῖον Θωμᾶν τε vielmehr Ματθαῖον καὶ Θωμᾶν), dann zum Schlusse der 12: Ἰούδαν τε τὸν Ἰσκαριώτην καὶ προδότην αὐτοῦ γεγονότα καὶ ἄλλους ἑβδομήκοντα δύο, worauf dann dieselben Namen wie oben folgen). Anders dagegen haer. 79, 3 (III, 530 sq. Dind. I, 1060 A Petav.) A. Petav.). Πέτρος τε καὶ Ἀνδρέας, Ἰάκωβος καὶ Ἰωάννης, Φίλιππος καὶ Βαρθολομαῖος, Θωμᾶς, Θαδδαῖος καὶ Ἰάκωβος Ἀλ- φαίου καὶ Ἰούδας Ἰακώβου καὶ Σίμων ὁ Κανανίτης, καὶ Ματθαῖος ὁ εἰς πλήρωσιν τῶν δώδεκα ἐκλελεγμένος· οὗτοι πάντες ἐξελέγησαν ἀπόστολοι κατὰ τὴν γῆν ἱερουργοῦντες τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἅμα Παύλῳ καὶ Βαρνάβᾳ καὶ λοιποῖς καὶ μυστηρίων ἀρχηγετοῦσιν σὺν Ἰακώβῳ τῷ ἀδελφῷ τοῦ κυρίου καὶ πρώτῳ ἐπισκόπῳ Ἱεροσολύμων. Dies leuchtet ein, dass Epiphanios an der späteren Stelle einer anderen Tradition gefolgt ist. In dem ersten Verzeichnisse fehlt Jakobus Alphäi, in dem zweiten Matthäus (wenn nicht vielmehr Ματθαῖος statt Θαδδαῖος zu lesen ist). Die 72 werden nur in dem ersten Verzeichnisse erwähnt; dafür wird dort der im zweiten Verzeichnisse ausser der Zahl der 12 genannte Jakobus der Bruder des Herrn mit Stillschweigen über- gangen. Zu S. 24 Anm. 1 Z. 4. Ausser dem bereits II, 2, 413 nachgetragenen Dorotheostexte in den Ausgaben des Oikumenios sind hier noch mehrere von Pfarrer Philipp Meyer auf dem Athos aufgefundene Texte zu nennen. Dahin gehört zunächst das Verzeichniss in cod. Vato- paedian. 635 saec. XI p. 7ᵃ—10ᵇ unter der Ueberschrift διατάξεις τῶν ἀποστόλων διὰ Κλήμεντος τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ἀποσταλείσαι. Dasselbe enthält denselben Text wie der Anonymus apud Oecumenium, nur in kürzerer Gestalt und mit Einschiebung von Marcus zwischen Matthäus und Jakobus Alphäi. Die Reihenfolge ist also folgende: 1. Simon Petrus. 2. Andreas. 3. Jakobus Zebedäi. 4. Johannes. 5. Philippus. 6. Bartho- lomäus. 7. Thomas. 8. Matthäus. 9. Marcus. 10. Jakobus Alphäi. 11. Thaddäus, auch Lebbäus u. Judas genannt. 12. Simon Kleopa. 13. Matthäus einer der 70 (d. h. Matthias). 14. Paulus. Dann ohne Ziffer Titus, Crescens und der Eunuch der Kandake. Dann folgt beinahe wörtlich der II, 2, 413, 17 ff. mitgetheilte Schluss: ἐκ τῶν ἀποστόλων τοῦ σω- τῆρος τῶν ἑβδομήκοντα γεγονάσιν ὡς ἱστορεῖ Κλήμης ἐν πέμπτῃ τῶν ὑποτυπώσεων Βαρνάβας, Σωσθένης, Κηφᾶς, Κλήμης αὐτὸς, Ματθαῖος (i. e. Ματθίας) ὁ συγκαταριθμηθεὶς τοῖς ἕνδεκα, Βαρσαββᾶς καὶ Λῖνος, οὓς μνημονεύει Παῦλος Τιμοθέῳ γράφων, Θαδδαῖος, Κλεόπας καὶ οἱ σὺν αὐτῷ. Das angebliche Citat aus dem 5. Buche der Hypotyposeis des Clemens ist natürlich aus Euseb. h. e. I, 12, 2 zurechtgemacht, wo ausdrücklich nur die ἱστορία Κηφᾶς als einer der 70 auf das genannte Buch des Clemens zurückgeführt wird. Danach weiss auch das Chron. Pasch. p. 421 ed. Bonn. zu berichten, dass Clemens in dem genannten Buche von den im Chron. Pasch. vorher verzeichneten 70 Jüngern Meldung gethan habe. Vgl. I, 201. 214. Anders Zahn Forschungen III, 68 ff.; 148 ff., welcher hier ein echtes Fragment aus den Hypotyposeis wiedererkennen will (Fragm. 10). Die Behauptung Zahns, Eusebios (a. a. O.) bezeuge ausdrücklich, dass Clemens im 5. Buche der Hypotyposen den Sosthenes als einen der 70 Jünger bezeichnet habe, ist einfach nicht wahr. Ferner der Text in cod. Iberitan. 60 saec. XII f. 191 sqq. mit der Ueberschrift Κοσμᾶ Ἰνδικοπλεύστου περὶ τῶν ὀνομάτων τῶν ἁγίων ἀποστόλων. Dem Verzeichnisse geht eine geschichtliche Einleitung vorher, in welcher Kosmas mit Dorotheos identificirt wird. Der Text ist wesentlich der bei Ducange abgedruckte Dorotheostext (Dorotheos B) mit geringen Varianten. In der Liste der 70 fehlt 15. Silas, daher nur 69 Namen genannt werden. Die Liste der 12 ist für die ersten acht Apostel (Petrus — Matthäus) wesentlich übereinstimmend mit dem Texte bei Ducange. Dann folgen aber: 9. Jakobus Alphäi. Judas Jacobi. 11. Simon Zelotes. 12. Matthias, in der Ordnung — aber nur in dieser — übereinstimmend mit Pseudohippolyt. Für die Nachrichten über die 4 letzten Apostel bietet der cod. Iberit. den Text der σύναξις τῶν ἀποστόλων (gedruckt in den Menäen zum 30. Juni). Eine zweite Dorotheoshandschrift ist cod. Esphigm. 87 saec. XV f. 506 ff. Der Text ist der des Ducange, erst die 70, dann die 12. Vorangeht f. 496 sqq. die bei Combefis gedruckte Liste Pseudohippolyts, zuerst die 12, dann die 70. Nichts Eigentümliches bietet das Apostelverzeichnis in dem cod. Vatopaed. 739 saec. XII f. 282ᵇ (am Schlusse der neutest. Schriften): σίμων ὁ λεγόμενος πέτρος καὶ ἀνδρέας ὁ ἀδελφὸς αὐτοῦ. ἰάκωβος καὶ ἰωάννης. φίλιππος καὶ βαρθολομαῖος, θωμᾶς καὶ ματθαῖος ὁ τελώνης. ἰάκωβος τοῦ ἀλφαίου καὶ θαδδαῖος ὁ καὶ ἰούδας. σίμων ὁ κανανίτης. καὶ ματθίας ὁ συγκαταψηφισθεὶς μετὰ τῶν ἕνδεκα ἀντὶ τοῦ προδότου. Zu S. 35 Z. 28. Für das ‘Legendarium’ oder ‘Sanctuarium’ des Boninus Mombritius ist hier u. ö. z. B. S. 67 Z. 30; Anm. 1 Z. 2; S. 139 Z. 21; S. 408 Z. 28 die Jahreszahl 1474, anderwärts 1476 wie S. 545 Z. 24 oder auch beide Zahlen z. B. S. 216 Z. 28 f. u. ö. angegeben. Bandini (Suppl. cod. lat. I, c. 267) gibt (nach der auf dem Rücken des Einbandes des von ihm benutzten Exemplars aufgedruckten Jahreszahl) 1476 an. Es sei daher bemerkt, dass die verschiedenen Datirungen des Druckes lediglich auf Vermuthungen beruhen. Die Legendensammlung des Mombritius ist ohne Titelblatt zu Mailand in zwei Bänden im Drucke erschienen. Das erste Blatt beginnt mit ‘Tabula in sequens sanctua-rium. Abundius confessor’. Auf dem 4. Blatte steht ‘Boninus Mombri-tius mediolanensis magnifico viro splendidissimoque equiti aurato, domino Cicho Simonetae illustrissimorum et excellentissimorum du-cum Mediolanı secretario s. d. p.’ (Folgen Verse). Vol. I auf dem vorletzten Blatte recto col. B. steht ‘Boninus Mombritius magnifico domino Cicho Simonetae salutem dicit’ (folgen Verse). Das Werk ist nicht paginirt; dagegen gibt der Index am Anfange den Verweis mit der Blattzahl. Vgl. Anton Saxius, Historia liter.-typograph. Medio-lanensis p. DCVIII (Bd. I der Bibl. script. Mediol. Phil. Argelati). Giornali dei Litterati T. X p. 446: Nell’anno 1476 il Mombrizio diede in Milano per la prima volta alle stampe i due rarissimi Tomi in foglio degli Atti de’Sancti da lui raccolti e pubblicati in Milano senza notari l’anno et le stampatore il quale par altro fu Filippo Zarragna. Vgl. auch P. Orlandi, Origine e progresso della stampa p. 367. Zu S. 128 Z. 19 ff. Zu den codd. der „Abdias“-Sammlung gehört ferner cod. Monac. 4554 saec. VIII/IX. Derselbe enthält zunächst die passio Petri et Pauli (Marcellustext mit einem vorgeschobenen Fragmente des kürzeren Linustextes der passio Pauli); dann f. 12ᵛ passio S. Andreae (praedicante et docente uerbum dei sancto andrea apostolo apud achaiam conprehensus est ab egeate) f. 14ᵛ anapausis S. Joannis apud ephesum (secundam post neronem persecutionem); f. 20ʳ passio S. Jacobi fratris S. Joannis (apostolus domini nostri Jesu Christi iacobus frater beati iohannis apostoli); f. 22ᵛ passio S. Thomae (*quodam tempore indorum rex gundaforus nomine misit praepositum suum’) p. 31ʳ passio S. Bartholomei (‘scitis sanctissimi ciues non uos latere indiae tres esse provinciae sicut ab historiographis adseruntur’) f. 34ᵘ passio S. Matthei (zuerst der Prolog ‘quoniam deo cura est de hominibus’, darnach der Text ‘erant itaque duo magi zaroes et arexat’ mit den Schlussworten f. 41ᵘ . . . ‘sequens libellus ostendit’) f. 41ᵘ passio S. Jacobi apostoli qui appellatus est frater domini (‘in illo tempore suscepit ecclesiam dei cum apostolis iacobus frater domini’). f. 42ᵘ folgt die passio S. Clementis papae urbis romae. — Ferner der mit Monac. 4554 nahe verwandt, aber weit jüngere cod. Monac. 22020 (Wess. 20) saec. XII vitae et passiones apostolorum et sanctorum. f. 1 passio Petri f. 8 Petri et Pauli f. 17 Andreae f. 24 Johannis f. 30 Jacobi Zeb. f. 33 Thomae f. 41 Bartholomaei f. 45 Matthaei f. 52 Jacobi fratris domini f. 53 Symonis chananaei et Judae Zelotis f. 59 Philippi. f. 60 folgt die passio Clementis papae. Ueber einen Würzburger Codex, cod. Herbipol. Mp. th. f. 78 saec. VIII, hat neuerdings Georg Schepss eingehende Mittheilungen gemacht (Briegers Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch. 1886 S. 449—459). Derselbe ist leider unvollständig. Er beginnt f. 1ᵃ mitten in der passio Johannis mit den Worten ‘addicos et eugenius dicerent apostolo super misericordiam docuisti’. Der Text ist der interpolirte Melito. f. 3ᵃ folgt Jakobus (‘Apostolus domini nostri Jesu Christi iacobus frater iohannis’ = Nausea 26ᵇ). f. 6ᵃ Thomas (der Text nahe verwandt mit Montepess. 55). f. 15ᵇ Bartholomaeus (ohne Prolog). f. 20ᵇ Matthaeus (mit Prolog ‘quoniam deo cura’ und Epilog ‘zaroes et artexar illi duo magi — sequens libellus ostendit’). f. 29ᵃ Simon u. Judas (‘Simon itaque cananaeus et iudas zelothis apostoli’ = Nausea 66ᵇ mit Epilog ‘scripsit autem — saeculorum. amen’). f. 35ᵇ Philippus (‘post ascensionem do- mini salvatoris’). Die Seite und mit ihr die ganze Handschrift schliesst abrupt mit ‘die tertia resurrexisset quomodo post resurrectionem eadem quae ante passionem’ = Fabr. 740, 8; Nausea 59b Z. 3. Die Ordnung der Passionen ist wie in Genovef. Paris H. I. 3 u. Montepess. 135. Auf der kaiserlichen Bibliothek zu Wien finden sich vier Handschriften der passiones apostolorum, cod. 534 (h. eccl. 121) saec. X, cod. 455 (h. eccl. 71) saec. XI, cod. 497 (h. eccl. 102) saec. XIII u. cod. 560 (h. eccl. 114) saec. XIII. Der cod. Vindob. 534 (vitae et passiones apostolorum) hat am Eingange ein Blatt verloren, welches die capitula und den Anfang der praefatio (‘Licet plurima’) enthält. Der Text beginnt jetzt f. 1r ‘quirendi quid ille aut ille proprium gessit apostolus’ (= Fabricius 390, 17). Auf die praefatio folgt de uocatione S. Petri apostoli. ‘Igitur post corporeum’. f. 27u die capitula de sancto Paulo apostolo, darnach der Text ‘fuit uir quidam in Hierusalem de tribu Beniamin’. f. 35r folgt der ymnus apostolorum ‘Praelata mundi culmina’. f. 35u passio S. Jacobi fratris domini J. ‘Tempore quo una annorum’. f. 43r miracula Andreae. f. 90u passio Andreae.
To vol. I.
On p. 15, line 14 ff. The whole investigation into the Didache (didachē / didaskalia), the Diataxeis or Diatalogai tōn apostolōn, from which writing the Didaskalia tōn apostolōn (the base text of the first six books of the Constitutions) must be strictly distinguished, has entered a new stage since the rediscovery of the ancient Didache tōn dōdeka apostolōn. We now know that it was not the Egyptian writing known under the title Hai diatagai hai dia Klēmentos—now usually called the “Apostolic Church Order”—but rather the ancient Didache tōn apostolōn that was the basic document for the first 32 chapters of Book VII of the Constitutions. The passage cited by Clement (Strom. I, 20, 100), from which one had previously been forced to infer the Alexandrian teacher’s use of the “Apostolic Church Order,” is also found in the Didache (3.5). How both writings relate to the work on the “Two Ways” cannot be examined more closely here. What is certain, however, is that the apostle-list prefixed to the “Apostolic Church Order,” and the narrative connected with it about a meeting of the apostles before their separation in order to issue regulations for the whole Church, is drawn from an independent source—one that surely extends beyond the end of the second century—and that only under the guidance of this source was the distribution of the various canons among the individual apostles carried out. Compare also Harnack, Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel, p. 193 ff.
On p. 20, line 10; p. 227, line 3. The name “Judas Thomas” has also made its way into the Syriac translation of the Gospels published by Cureton at John 14:22; see Tischendorf, 8th ed., at that passage. Bäthgen (Evangelienfragmente. Der griech. Text des Cureton’schen Syrers wiederhergestellt. Leipzig 1886) gives there the retroversion: “He says to him: Judas Thomas.” But it is hardly likely that any Greek manuscript read that way.
On p. 22, line 1 from the bottom. From Epiphanius we possess three lists; besides the one named in the text (haer. 79.3), there are two more, almost identical in wording, in the Endēmia Christou prefixed to the Panarion and in the Anakephalaiōsis of the Panarion. The list in the Endēmia Christou (I, 336 ff. Dindorf; I, 50 C Petavius) runs as follows: [Greek list follows, including the Twelve and then the Seventy(-two), with Mark, Luke, Justus, Barnabas, Ananias, Rufus, Niger, etc., and then Paul as the holy apostle…]
Almost word-for-word the same is found in the Anakephalaiōsis (I, 240 ff. Dindorf; II, 138 A Petavius), only with very slight stylistic differences (instead of “Matthew, and Thomas also,” rather “Matthew and Thomas”), and then at the close of the Twelve: “and Judas Iscariot, who became his betrayer, and also seventy-two others,” after which the same names as above follow. Different, however, is haer. 79.3 (III, 530 ff. Dindorf; I, 1060 A Petavius): [Greek list follows.] It is clear that at the later place Epiphanius has followed another tradition. In the first list James son of Alphaeus is missing; in the second, Matthew (unless one should rather read “Matthew” instead of “Thaddaeus”). The Seventy(-two) are mentioned only in the first list; but there James the brother of the Lord—named in the second list in addition to the number of the Twelve—is passed over in silence.
On p. 24, note 1, line 4. Besides the Dorotheus text already added at II, 2, 413 in the editions of Oecumenius, several further texts found on Athos by Pastor Philipp Meyer should be mentioned. First among them is the list in codex Vatopedi 635 (11th cent.), pp. 7a–10b, under the heading “The ordinances of the apostles sent to the nations through Clement.” It contains the same text as the Anonymus apud Oecumenium, only in shorter form and with the insertion of Mark between Matthew and James son of Alphaeus. The order is therefore as follows: 1. Simon Peter; 2. Andrew; 3. James son of Zebedee; 4. John; 5. Philip; 6. Bartholomew; 7. Thomas; 8. Matthew; 9. Mark; 10. James son of Alphaeus; 11. Thaddaeus, also called Lebbaeus and Judas; 12. Simon Cleopas; 13. Matthew, one of the Seventy (i.e., Matthias); 14. Paul. Then, without a number: Titus, Crescens, and the eunuch of Candace. Then there follows, almost verbatim, the conclusion communicated at II, 2, 413, 17 ff.: “Of the apostles of the Saviour, the following became of the Seventy, as Clement relates in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis: Barnabas, Sosthenes, Cephas, Clement himself, Matthew (i.e., Matthias) who was numbered with the Eleven, Barsabbas and Linus (whom Paul mentions when writing to Timothy), Thaddaeus, Cleopas and those with him.”
The alleged quotation from the fifth book of Clement’s Hypotyposeis is of course patched together from Eusebius, Hist. eccl. I.12.2, where explicitly only the story about Cephas as one of the Seventy is traced back to the said book of Clement. Accordingly the Chronicon Paschale (p. 421, Bonn ed.) also reports that Clement, in the named book, gave information about the Seventy disciples listed earlier in the Chronicon Paschale. Compare I, 201, 214. Zahn takes a different view (Forschungen III, 68 ff.; 148 ff.), who wants to recognize here a genuine fragment from the Hypotyposeis (Fragment 10). Zahn’s claim that Eusebius (loc. cit.) expressly testifies that Clement in the fifth book of the Hypotyposeis described Sosthenes as one of the Seventy disciples is simply not true.
Further, the text in codex Iberitanus 60 (12th cent.), fol. 191 ff., with the heading “Cosmas Indicopleustes on the names of the holy apostles.” A historical introduction precedes the list, in which Cosmas is identified with Dorotheus. The text is essentially the Dorotheus text printed by Ducange (Dorotheus B) with minor variants. In the list of the Seventy, Silas (no. 15) is missing, so that only 69 names are given. The list of the Twelve agrees for the first eight apostles (Peter–Matthew) essentially with the text in Ducange. Then, however, follow: 9. James son of Alphaeus; 10. Judas of James; 11. Simon Zelotes; 12. Matthias—in an order which only here agrees with Pseudo-Hippolytus. For the information about the last four apostles, codex Iberitanus offers the text of the Synaxis of the Apostles (printed in the Menaia for 30 June). A second Dorotheus manuscript is codex Esphigmenou 87 (15th cent.), fol. 506 ff.
