Note 409 — Chapter VI

Footnote 409:

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So did the Montanists and Antimontanists mutually reproach each other with Judaising (see the Montanist writings of Tertullian). Just in the same way the arrangements as to worship and organisation, which were ever being more richly developed, were described by the freer parties as Judaising, because they made appeal to the Old Testament, though, as regards their contents, they had little in common with Judaism. But is not the method of claiming Old Testament authority for the regulations rendered necessary by circumstances nearly as old as Christianity itself? Against whom the lost treatise of Clement of Alexandria "κανων εκκλησιαστικος 'η προς τους Ιουδαιζοντας" (Euseb., H. E. VI. 13. 3) was directed, we cannot tell. But as we read, Strom., VI. 15, 125, that the Holy Scriptures are to be expounded according to the εκκλησιαστικος κανων, and then find the following definition of the Canon: κανων δε εκκλησιαστικος 'η συνωδια και συμφωνια νομον τε και προφητων τη κατα την του κυριου παρουσιαν παραδιδομενηι διαθηκηι, we may conjecture that the Judaisers were those Christians, who, in principle, or to some extent, objected to the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament. We have then to think either of Marcionite Christians or of "Chiliasts," that is, the old Christians who were still numerous in Egypt about the middle of the third century (see Dionys. Alex, in Euseb., H. E. VII. 24). In the first case, the title of the treatise would be paradoxical. But perhaps the treatise refers to the Quarto-decimans, although the expression κανων εκκλησιαστικος seems too ponderous for them (see, however, Orig., Comm. in Matth. n. 76, ed. Delarue III. p. 895) Clement may possibly have had Jewish Christians before him. See Zahn, Forschungen, vol. III. p. 37 f.