t is not clear that he had read more
than the opening of these MSS. The fact that different epistles are
prefixed to the same work leads him to conjecture "that there were two
editions made of the _Acts of Peter_ (his usual title for the
collection), but in course of time the one perished and that of Clement
prevailed." This is interesting as anticipating a result of modern
criticism, as will appear below. The earliest probable reference to our
_Homilies_ occurs in a work of doubtful date, the pseudo-Athanasian
_Synopsis_, which mentions "Clementines, whence came by selection and
rewriting the true and inspired form." Here too we have the first sure
trace of an expurgated recension, made with the idea of recovering the
genuine form assumed, as earlier by Epiphanius, to lie behind an
unorthodox recension of Clement's narrative. As, moreover, the extant
_Epitome_ is based on our _Homilies_, it is natural to suppose it was
also the basis of earlier orthodox recensions, one or more of which may
be used in certain Florilegia of the 7th century and later. Nowhere do
we find the title _Homilies_ given to any form of the Clementine
collection in antiquity.

(ii.) _The Genesis of the Clementine Literature._ It has been needful to
cite so much of the evidence proving that our _Homilies_ and
_Recognitions_ are both recensions of a common basis, at first known as
the _Circuits of Peter_ and later by titles connecting it rather with
Clement, its ostensible author, because it affords data also for the
historical problems touching (a) the contents and origin of the primary
Clementine work, and (b) the conditions under which our extant
recensions of it arose.

(a) _The Circuits of Peter_, as defined on the one hand by the epistle
of Clement to James originally prefixed to it and by patristic evidence,
and on the other by the common element in our _Homilies_ and
_Recognitions_, may be conceived as follows. It contained accounts of
Peter's teachings and discussions at various points on a route beginning
at Caesarea, and extending northwards along the coast-lands of Syria as
far as Antioch. During this tour he meets with persons of typically
erroneous views, which it was presumably the aim of the work to refute
in the interests of true Christianity, conceived as the final form of
divine revelation--a revelation given through true prophecy embodied in
a succession of persons, the chief of whom were Moses and the prophet
whom Moses foreto