Knowledge & Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines
Situating the Recognitions in Fourth Century Syria
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2. Riehe, no. 213

By Nicole Kelley
November 2006
Mohr Siebeck
Distributed by
ISBN: 3161490363
250 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/8"
$107.50 Paper Original

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The Pseudo-Clementines are best known for preserving early "Jewish Christian" traditions, but have not been appreciated as a resource for understanding the struggles over identity and orthodoxy among fourth-century Christians, Jews, and pagans. Using the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Nicole Kelley analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed by the Recognitions. These strategies discredit the knowledge of philosophers and astrologers, and establish Peter and Clement as the exclusive stewards of prophetic knowledge, which has been handed down to them by Jesus. This analysis reveals that the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions is not a jumbled collection of earlier source materials, as previous interpreters have thought, but a coherent narrative concerned primarily with epistemological issues. The author understands the Recognitions as a reflection of complex rivalries between several types of Christian and non-Christian groups such as that found in fourth-century Antioch or Edessa.

Contents:
Chapter 1. Studying the Pseudo-Clementines
Chapter 2. Philosophers and the Quest for Philosophical Truth
Chapter 3. Astrologers and the Problem with Astral Determinism
Chapter 4. The Followers of the True Prophet
Chapter 5. The Recognitions and its Fourth-Century Syrian Context

New Testament
Criticism & Interpretation


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