Jewish-Christian Interpretation of the Pentateuch in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies:

6. The Harmony Criterion

6 The Harmony Criterion 6.1. INTRODUCTION TO THE HARMONY CRITERION: CREATION, CREATOR, AND THE SCRIPTURES The present study seeks to offer a coherent account of the exegetical theory put forth in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies. So far, I have examined the Homilist’s rejection of allegorism. We have seen that the Homilist also postulates the existence of various false pericopes embedded within the Pentateuch. I am proposing that, according the Homilist, these “false pericopes” are to be evaluated by the application of three distinct external criteria. Of these three criteria, I have thus far examined two: the True Prophet’s teaching and the oral tradition. We come now to the third and final criterion in this study, which I designate as the “harmony criterion.” From the Homilist’s presentation of the True Prophet’s teaching, we learn something about the Homilist’s “Christian” leanings, whereby the words of Jesus are deemed essential for evaluating the Scriptures. From the oral tradition, we discover something of the Homilist’s “Jewish” affinities, whereby appeal is made to an oral tradition akin to that of the rabbis in order to ensure correct interpretation of the Scriptures. Finally, the harmony criterion—the focus of this chapter—is an expression of the Homilist’s philosophical outlook, his cosmopolitan sensitivities, and his ethical orientation. All three criteria—the True Prophet’s teaching, the oral tradition, and the harmony criterion—are employed by the Homilist in his unique approach to the Pentateuch in general and in his evaluation of its falsehoods in particular. The very fact that falsehoods exist in Scripture in the first place is explained, in part, by the Homilist with reference to the harmony criterion. For as we read in Hom. 3.46, οὕτως αἱ τοῦ τὸν οὐρανὸν κτίσαντος θεοῦ διάβολοι φωναὶ καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν σὺν αὐταῖς ἐναντίων φωνῶν ἀκυροῦνται καὶ ὑπὸ τῆς κτίσεως ἐλέγχονται· οὐ γὰρ ὑπὸ χειρὸς προφητικῆς ἐγράφησαν, διὸ καὶ τῇ τοῦ τὰ πάντα κτίσαντος θεοῦ χειρὶ ἐναντίαι φαίνονται. 137 The sayings [i.e., the “false pericopes”] accusatory of God who made the heaven are both rendered void by the opposite sayings which are alongside them, and are censured by creation, for they were not written by a prophetic hand. For this reason, they also appear opposite to the hand of God who made all things.1 Since the Pentateuch’s falsehoods derive from the hands of men who were not prophets, they also conflict with creation, the “hand of God” (θεοῦ χείρ). The “hand of god” in this passage is a clear reference to creation (κτίσις), that is, the natural world. Hom. 3.47 goes on to say that the Mosaic legislation was originally transmitted “without writing” from Moses to the seventy wise men. Accordingly, the Torah in its written form acquired falsehoods, owing to the fact that those who eventually did transcribed it (after Moses’ death, after the exile) “were not prophets.”2 Consequently, as Hom. 3.46 above says, because certain passages of Scripture “were not written by a prophetic hand” (οὐ ὑπὸ χειρὸς προφητικῆς ἐγράφησαν), they also conflict with and are censured by the very “handwriting of God” (τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ χειρόγραφον), by which the Homilist means “creation” itself.3 Thus, because the Torah in its present written form has accumulated material that comes from the handwriting of men who were not prophets, the written Torah is now to be “checked against” God’s own handwriting, his creation. The notion that certain texts are “censured by creation” (ὑπὸ τῆς κτίσεως ἐλέγχεσθαι) is based on the fundamental assumption that the “true” Scriptures are, in some sense, “in agreement” with God’s creation. That the Pentateuch is “in agreement with” creation and can therefore be “checked against” creation 1. But see also Hom. 2.49–50. 2. See also Hom. 3.47.4. According to Karl Evan Shuve (“The Doctrine of the False Pericopes and Other Late Antique Approaches to the Problem of Scripture’s Unity,” in Nouvelles intrigues pseudocl émentines—Plots in the Pseudo-Clementine Romance: Actes du deuxième colloque international sur la littérature apocryphe chrétienne, ed. Frédéric Amsler et al. [Lausanne: Editions du Zebre, 2008], 440), “The key contrast is not between oral and written but rather between prophetic transmission and nonprophetic transmission.” 3. As Hans Joachim Schoeps puts it (Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church, trans. Douglas R. A. Hare [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969], 81), “The Creation is a ‘document written with God’s hand,’ or God’s diagraphe (Hom. 1:18).” The expression τὸ τοῦ θεοῦ χειρόγραφον as a reference to creation is not attested elsewhere. For God’s “hand” involved in creation, see also Hom. 11.22.3. See Origen, Philoc. 22.21; Fr. 1 Reg. 15.9–11 (GCS 295.26; M.12.992A); Cyril of Alexandria, Is. 4.4; Procopius of Gaza, Is. 26...