Problems of Knowledge and Authority in the Pseudo-Clementine Romance of Recognitions

The Pseudo-Clementines are important texts in their own right, not mere repositories of earlier Christian sources. Analysis of one layer of the Recognitions, known as the "romance of recognitions," reveals that it is part of a narrative argument about knowledge and authority related to the Recognitions' larger polemical agenda: along with other parts of the story line, it shows that the Apostle Peter has supreme authority because of his knowledge of human and divine things. This insistence on Peter's authority makes sense in light of the Recognitions' fourth-century Syrian context, where Christians devoted to Peter's memory competed with other religious groups.