Clement’s own surviving works (the Protrepticus, Paedagogus, Stromata) contain no explicit citation of Hegesippus by name. However, Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History preserves fragments of Clement’s lost Hypotyposes that parallel Hegesippus’s account of James the Just. For example, Clement writes (via Eusebius) that after the Ascension “Peter and James and John… did not contend for honor, but chose James the Just bishop of Jerusalem”. In the next chapter Clement notes “there were two Jameses: one called the Just, who was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and was beaten to death with a club”. This description is identical to Hegesippus’s account of James’s martyrdom (as Eusebius himself records).
Eusebius explicitly connects Clement’s and Hegesippus’s versions. He cites Clement’s statement that James “was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple, and was beaten to death with a club”, then immediately adds that Hegesippus “gives the most accurate account” of the same events. Later in the same chapter Eusebius notes, “These things are related at length by Hegesippus, who is in agreement with Clement”. In other words, Clement’s lost Hypotyposes and Hegesippus’s Memoirs share the same narrative: both report James’s role as leader in Jerusalem and his martyrdom from the Temple.
This close correspondence has long been noted. Arthur Cushman McGiffert (translating Eusebius) remarks that Clement’s brief notice of James’s death “has been already indicated by… Clement,” and that Hegesippus “gives the most accurate account in the fifth book”. The Church historian Eusebius implies that Clement probably relied on the same traditions as Hegesippus (or even drew from Hegesippus directly) when he wrote his Hypotyposes. Modern studies echo this point: Clement’s chronology and anecdotes (e.g. in Stromata 1.21) do not match any known passage of Josephus, leading some scholars to suggest Clement was quoting from misattributed sources or shared traditions (perhaps Hegesippus’s).
In summary, Clement of Alexandria never names Hegesippus explicitly, but the evidence from his writings (as preserved by Eusebius) shows he knew the same material. Clement’s statements about James (first bishop of Jerusalem, martyred by being thrown from the Temple) exactly parallel the Hypomnemata of Hegesippus. Eusebius therefore concludes they agree. Most scholars interpret this as Clement’s indirect use of Hegesippus’s tradition
In Historia ecclesiastica 2.23, Eusebius first cites Clement of Alexandria from the Hypotyposes, stating that James was “thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and beaten to death with a club.” He then immediately adds that Hegesippus “gives the most accurate account” of the same events and proceeds to reproduce Hegesippus’s narrative at length. Eusebius closes the section by remarking that “these things are related at length by Hegesippus, who is in agreement with Clement.” The structure of the chapter leaves no doubt that Clement and Hegesippus are reporting the same martyrdom tradition, with Hegesippus supplying the fuller version.
Crucially, Eusebius also pauses at this point to emphasize the existence of two Jameses, distinguishing James the Just from James son of Alphaeus. That clarification is not incidental. It shows that, in Eusebius’s sources, the Temple-pinnacle martyrdom was already firmly associated with James the Jerusalem leader, not with the apostle son of Alphaeus. Clement’s brief notice and Hegesippus’s extended account belong to the same line of transmission and concern the same figure.
When later apostolic death lists—such as those reflected in the Codex Marcianus tradition—assign to “Jacobus Alphaei” a death “near the Temple” (prope templum sepelitur), the most economical explanation is not the preservation of an independent Alphaeus tradition, but the migration of the Hegesippan James-the-Just narrative into schematic apostolic catalogues. These lists aim to provide each apostle with a death location and manner, and in doing so they frequently redistribute well-known martyrdom motifs when faced with duplicate or ambiguous names.
In other words, the “Jacob Alphaeus near the Temple” notice represents a secondary reassignment of the Jerusalem martyrdom tradition. The underlying narrative—death connected with the Temple precincts, burial on or near the site—originates with Hegesippus, is already mediated through Clement’s Hypotyposes, and is explicitly linked by Eusebius to James the Just. The later attribution to James son of Alphaeus is best explained as a by-product of list-making, not as evidence for a separate early memory.
This reading preserves Eusebius’s own logic, respects his insistence on distinguishing the two Jameses, and explains why the same distinctive Temple-centered death motif appears under different names in later apostolic death traditions.
