The story has "Clement" discover that he is of noble descent (the family of Caesar). I adapted this story in my development of the original gospel (the connection with the Syro-Phoenician woman was the tipping point). I have a suspicion that Peter's struggle against Simon was a development of a tradition regarding a war between Mark and Simon (my next post will demonstrate this from the Acts of Peter with "Marcellus," "Simon" and "Agrippa" throughout the narrative).
In my opinion it is impossible to approach the Marcionite tradition without coming face to face with the anti-Petrine vein. I happen to think that in its original form it was "anti-Simonian." Look at Marcion's undoubted hatred for Basilides and Basilides affinity for "Peter" or "Simon" as it was developed among the Church Fathers.
Of course, some of this was anticipated by the Tübingen School in the late 19th and early 20th cc., which maintained that they are actually anti-Pauline. They were self-confessedly forced into what seemed an improbable and unnecessary theory by the weight of the evidence. Or as Sherlock Holmes said (I quote from memory): “When all other possibilities have been disproven, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth”. Nor was this the artificial expansion of single data into an unsupported system, such as Reitzenstein came up with.
A significant number of sober Germans were forced into a consensus. In fact, the reason their theory still had the defect of not explaining the reason for hostility to Paul was their very sobriety. They didn’t take the next step of trying to see what these texts showed in fictional form about the historical Paul, because they didn’t want to use such late documents without some compelling support from elsewhere.
What I’m trying to do is to work out how the name “Simon” could shift in its designation. One part of the answer is probably that once the historical Simon had been merged with some standard images and all authors depended on secondary sources, the name could conveniently be used to designate the opponent of whoever was being promoted. It helped that Simon was known as a name of Peter, so a favourable account of Simon could easily become a favourable account of Simon Peter.
Another part of the answer is probably that the authors of the Clemintina took over an existing story with Peter as the villain and changed the names round. What must not be forgotten is that Simon is always depicted as an originator. Even in the Clementina, late as they are, Simon’s foe, someone named or re-named Peter, is a representative of Jesus (so he says: I’m not impressed by his character). Simon is an originator, and even this highly hostile work has to admit his significance and capability. You could fairly easily see the Simon of the Clementina as a hostile account of Mark also known as Paul.
Another possibility that has been raised by a regular reader is that the name Simon was connected with Jesus. If this holds true that one might argue for a connection between the siman (sêmeion σημειον) of the siman of John I: 14.
Here is a proposed interpretative reading of the first half of the verse greatly developed by my good friend Professor Rory Boid.
“And the Word, the Plan behind the plan of the Heavenly Tabernacle, the simultaneoous emanation of God and uncreated Power of creation, in the beginning standing with God [v. 2], became flesh and dwelt amongst us. It had never been completely or really absent, because all things were made through it [v. 3]. It could not actually have been said to have become flesh till it manifested itself as light by which we could see it through a created form. [v. 9]”.
Here is a fairly literal βθτ σλιγητλυ εχπανδεδ translation of the second half. “We have beheld the Kavod of this word made flesh, and this Kavod, though not simply identical with the unseeable Kavod of the Unique standing with the Father, is like it, that is, accurately reflects it and is of the same nature”.
The report that Simon claimed to be the Power that is called Great, and appeared to the Samaritans as the Father and to the Jews as the Son, sounds like a mangled version of verses 12 to 14. This report about Simon could have been made about Jesus if anyone had condensed these verses without giving their pre-supposed conceptual framework.
This is why I think that most of what went into the forming of the reports of Simon is a piece of authentic Christian theological writing based on John’s Gospel, or based on whatever bit of the original single Gospel was excerpted and edited to form what we have as John’s Gospel. There remains the difficulty that Simon is not just said to hold Samaritan views, as Jesus was. He is said to come from a particular Samaritan village and his mother and father are named. It follows that Simon is not an old title of Jesus. On the other hand, what is said about Simon sounds like a hostile account of Jesus.
Just as a guess at the moment, the solution to the contradiction or anomaly might be that an authoritative teacher or expositor was commonly referred to by a name based on what was distinctive in their exposition of the core of the doctine, as with the Aramaic name Sakta [Sextus]. In that case Simon would be a name given by readers or hearers to the authority behind the exposition of the concept of the siman of the siman, the embodiment of the invisible Power which is itself the indicator of God.Simon’s father’s name might be indicative of his identity.
Abul Fath (fourteenth century Samaritan chronicler) says that Simon came from the town of علين עלינ in Samaria and that Stephen came from the same town. (A.F. 157: 15 to 159: 10.). His information about Simon in the passage in question is not taken from a Christian source, but one independently Samaritan. The way he writes the name Stephen indicates that his source at this point was in Aramaic. Although the mss. have largely adapted the name Simon to the original Hebrew form, the form re-borrowed into Aramaic from Greek is clearly what is intended. Boid takes this as confirmation that this secondary form of the name had become familiar enough in Hebrew and Aramaic to be treated as a Hebrew or Aramaic word when devising symbolic names. A.F. then says (159: 10-11) that Jesus had fifteen disciples (not apostles), the last being Yehudah. The form is again Hebrew or Aramaic. After Yehudah the succession was broken and the Church radically changed its nature. I take it that part of what is meant is that the succession of Bishops of Samaria was broken. If he accepts that there were twelve disciples to start with, then there were five Bishops of Samaria before a political change occurred.
Somewhere behind all this is hostility to the claim of the Church of Samaria not to need authorisation from Peter, the same claim made by the Coptic Church to this day. To attack this Church, some people were willing to attack the gospel itself. Perhaps they used the argument used by Clement in the fragment of his letter about the secret Gospel of Mark, that even the truth is not truth when uttered by a heretic, so that even the truth with accurate quotations is to be denied; but perhaps they just didn’t realise that what they were reading was a serious exegesis with an unfamiliar technical vocabulary. I’m sorry to say I think it would have been impossible to miss the meaning to that extent, and that the first explanation seems more likely.
I would think that Hippolytus worked from a hostile summary, not from the original, and was misled. There doesn’t seem to be any other way to explain the fact that what survives of the Apophasis Megalê Αποφασις Μεγαλη of the later Simonian school is not in conflict with Christian doctrine, though it does work from an unfamiliar allegorical system. This resembles the anomaly of the striking agreement of Hippolytus with what Marcion meant along with his hostility to what he had been wrongly told of Marcion’s system.
