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Epicurean (e.g., 4.6). Consequently, as Côté has demonstrated, the
Homilies departs from earlier traditions to stress Simon s link to
Hellenism.103 Within the Homilies, the figure of Simon may thus serve, not
just to counter Marcionites, but also to establish the Gentile genealogy of
 heresy and to throw doubt on the  orthodoxy of all Christians who draw
on Hellenistic learning.104
    
98
Eusebius dismissive approach to Syriac Christianity, both within and beyond the
Roman Empire, is noted by Brock,  Eusebius, 212.
99
On the heresiologial comments in the Ecclesiastical History, together with their
various sources, see e.g. Grant, Eusebius, 84 96; Barnes, Constantine, 133 35.
100
On the parallels between Peter and Simon, see Côté, Thème, 23 29.
101
That the Pseudo-Clementine Simon is a conflate character, not to be identified with
any single group or figure, has been convincingly established by D. Côté,  Fonction, 513
23; see also Edwards,  Clementina, 462.
102
A. Salles,  Simon le magicien ou Marcion? Vigiliae christianae 12 (1958) 197
224.
103
Côté, Thème, 195 96.
104
I here summarize the results of my more focused inquiries into the issue in
 Heresiology and  From Judaism and Hellenism.
Annette Yoshiko Reed
30
 Jewish Christianity
For the authors/redactors of the Homilies, a term such as  Jewish
Christianity would have likely seemed highly redundant. The Homilies, as
we have seen, depicts the apostolic age as an extension of biblical and
Jewish history, marked by the opening of a parallel line of salvation for the
Gentiles. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the terms  Christian and
 Christianity are never used in the Homilies. The text speaks of Jews (and
Pharisees in particular) as heirs to the teachings of the prophet Moses. Peter
and Barnabus refer to their own Jewish ethnicity and self-identify with Jews
and Israel (e.g., 1.13; 3.4; 9.20). Even when referring to Clement and other
Gentile followers of Jesus, the text refrains from distinguishing them as
 Christians. Most often, they are termed  God-fearers (theosebeis), the
well-known label that we find elsewhere applied to Gentile sympathizers
with Judaism.105
Moreover, in Homilies 11.16, the term  Jew is redefined so as to include
Jewish followers of Moses as well as Gentile followers of Jesus:
If anyone acts impiously, he is not pious. In the same way, if a foreigner keeps the
Law, he is a Jew (ean ho allophulos ton nomon praksê, Ioudaios estin), while he who
does not is a Greek (mê praksas de Hellên). For the Jew, believing in God, keeps the
Law (ho gar Ioudaios pisteuôn theô poiei ton nomon). (Hom. 11.16)
The category of  Jew here denotes anyone who follows the Law that God
laid out for them. As a result, the category of  apostle is not a subset or
paradigm of  Christian ; rather, it serves to mark adherence to the true
religion proclaimed by Moses and Jesus, in contrast to polytheistic and
idolatrous  pagan religions and the  heresies that use Christ s name to
promote false beliefs and impure practices.
If Christianity and Judaism appear to be different, the reader of the
Homilies is assured that this is only because God chose to hide the prophet
of one from the followers of the other (8.6). Even as the Homilies thus
acknowledges that most Jews and Christians are blind to Christianity s true
nature as the divine disclosure of Judaism to other nations, it depicts those
who understand as specially blessed. Through the mouth of the Jewish
apostle Peter, the authors/redactors reveal that no one is richer in wisdom
than the few who embrace both Moses and Jesus:
If anyone has been thought worthy to recognize by himself both (i.e. Moses and
Jesus) as preaching one doctrine (kataksiôtheiê tous amphoterous epignônai hôs
mias didaskalias hup autôn kekrugmenês), that one has been counted rich in God,
understanding both the old things as new in time and the new things as old. (Hom.
8.7; cf. Rec. 4.5)
    
105
E.g. J. Reynolds and R. Tannebaum, Jews and God-Fearers at Aphrodisias: Greek
Inscriptions with Commentary (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 48
66.
 Jewish Christianity as Counter-history?
31
Through Peter, they thus propose that there are two paths to salvation, and
the two paths are actually one. Jews can be saved as Jews; Christians can be
saved as Christians; and  Jewish Christians are the best of all.
By contrast, Eusebius promotes an image of Christianity as a new/old
ethnos (e.g., 1.1.9) with a history and religion distinct from those of the
Jews. To this effort, Jewish converts to Christianity would seem to pose a
problem. Not only does their combination of Christian belief and Jewish
ethnicity undermine his claims concerning the historical and spiritual
disjunction between Judaism and Abrahamic/Christian religion, but the very
fact of their belief in Jesus as messiah might speak against his theory that
God brought the destruction of the Temple and other calamities to punish the
Jews for rejecting Jesus and his apostles.106
Arguably, Eusebius solves such problems through his account of the
Jerusalem church, on the one hand, and his description of the Ebionites, on
the other. Both accounts echo his treatment of Judaism in poignant ways.
And, in each case, issues of succession are emphasized.
We noted above how Eusebius stresses the discontinuity in Jewish history
in multiple ways, extricating Abrahamic religion from Judaism and stressing
the breaks in the lines of Jewish prophetic, royal, and priestly succession.
Similarly, in his description of the Jerusalem church, there is a striking over-
determination in the assertion of discontinuity. When discussing the first
Jewish revolt against Rome (III 5 8), Eusebius famously claims that the
Christians of Jerusalem left the city for Pella prior to the Roman siege of 70
C.E:
Furthermore, the people of the Jerusalem church (tou laou tês en Hierosolumois
ekklêseias), by means of a prophesy given by revelation to acceptable persons there,
were ordered to leave the city before the war began and settle in a town in Peraea
called Pella. When those who believed in Christ from Jerusalem migrated (tôn eis
Christon pepisteukotôn apo tês Hierousalêm metôkismenôn), it was as if holy men
had utterly abandoned the royal metropolis of the Jews and the entire Jewish land,
and the judgment of God (hê ek theo dikê) at last overtook them for their crimes
against Christ and his apostles, completely blotting that wicked generation from
among men. (Hist. eccl. III 5.3)107
    
106
That the problem of  Jewish Christianity was a  live issue for Eusebius may be
confirmed by several instances in which he seems to have changed his mind on related
topics; see Grant, Eusebius, 15.
107
The historicity of the tradition has been hotly debated. See e.g. J. Munck,  Jewish
Christianity in Post-Apostolic Times, New Testament Studies 6 (1959): 103 4; M. Simon,
 La migration à Pella: Légende ou réalité? Recherches de science religieuse 60 (1972): 37
54; G. Lüdemann,  The Successors of Pre-70 Jerusalem Christianity: A Critical Evaluation
of the Pella Tradition, in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, vol. 1, The Shaping of
Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries (ed. E. P. Sanders; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1980), 161 73; J. Verheyden,  The Flight of Christians to Pella, Ephemerides theologicae
lovanienses 66 (1990): 368 84; J. Wehnert,  Die Auswanderung der Jerusalemer Christen
Annette Yoshiko Reed
32
Following this passage, we might infer that there was no Christian presence
in Jerusalem between the first Jewish War and the city s repopulation by
Gentile Christians. Yet, when Eusebius later recounts the succession of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]