The editorial history of the two Pseudo-Clementine narratives known as the Recognitions and the Homilies is intricate, to say the least. From an ever-elusive “basic writing” spring two novelistic stories with extensive translation histories, subjected to significant editorial interventions, and anthologized alongside other late ancient and medieval texts. This article focuses on the addition of pseudonymous epistles as prefatory material for these Pseudo-Clementines and follows one of these letters in particular, the Epistula Clementis (Ep. Clem.). The Epistula Clementis accompanies the Latin Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions in a host of medieval anthologies concerned with Petrine hagiography and ecclesial succession, as well as histories, dialogues, and epistolary texts with anti-Judaic resonances. I argue that the Epistula Clementis, as a prefatory text, was integral to the success of the Recognitions in these later anthologies, highlighting the transformative power of the preface upon its associated text as well as the hermeneutical force of the anthology itself.

The second half of the Akhmîm fragment of the Gospel of Peter distinguishes the recalcitrant Jewish leaders, who suppress the truth of Jesus’ resurrection, from the Jewish people, who regret their murder of Jesus the moment he dies – a distinction best explained by the thesis that the document was produced by and for Jewish Christians living in second-century Syria. Other Christian documents related to the Gospel of Peter and written or influenced by second- and third-century Jewish Christians, especially the Didascalia Apostolorum, show a similar combination of philo- and anti-Judaism. The Gospel's reference to the disciples fasting during the interim between Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection may refer to the practice, attested in the Didascalia and elsewhere, of liturgical fasting for the Jews. Apocalypse of Peter 2, which was probably an original part of the Gospel, holds out hope for Israel's restoration. As the Akhmîm scribe excised this hopeful chapter from the Apocalypse, so he probably excised the hopeful ending of the Gospel, in which the risen Jesus commissioned the disciples to continue the work of separating the people from their recalcitrant leaders and thereby converting them to faith in the one they had crucified.

The Gospel of the Ebionites is a ‘text’ that only exists as fragments cited in and extrapolated from the heresiological writings of Epiphanius (Pan. 30). Like Recognitions 1.27–71, the Gospel of the Ebionites is one of a number of second- and third-century Jewish Christian sources, texts and traditions alleging that Jesus rejected animal sacrifice. In this article, I seek to review the history of research on this particular text and tradition and explore its significance as a case study in the use of non-canonical gospel traditions in New Testament studies.

J. Louis Martyn and others have argued that a decision by late first-century rabbis to introduce a liturgical curse against heretics (Birkat Ha-Minim) provides the background for early Christian passages about Christians being excluded from and cursed in synagogues. More recent scholars, however, have challenged the assumption that the earliest form of Birkat Ha-Minim referred to Christians and that the rabbis controlled the synagogues. The present article defends the basics of Martyn's reconstruction while nuancing the extent of rabbinic control in the early Christian centuries. It also suggests, however, that the original of Birkat Ha-Minim may have been a Qumranian curse on the Romans.