Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VIII/Pseudo-Clementine Literature/The Clementine Homilies/Homily III/Chapter 23

by Anonymous

Chapter XXIII.—Two Kinds of Prophecy.

“Let us then understand that there are two kinds of prophecy:^[1]  the one male; and let it be defined that the first, being the male, has been ranked after the other in the order of advent; but the second, being female, has been appointed to come first in the advent of the pairs.  This second, therefore, being amongst those born of woman, as the female superintendent of this present world, wishes to be thought masculine.^[2]  Wherefore, stealing the seeds of the male, and sowing them with her own seeds of the flesh, she brings forth the fruits—that is, words—as wholly her own.  And she promises that she will give the present earthly riches as a dowry, wishing to change the slow for the swift, the small for the greater.

Footnotes

1. Literally, “Let there be to us two genuine prophecies.”
2. [The doctrine of these chapters is tinged with Gnostic dualism; much of the matter might, according to tradition, have been equally well put in the mouth of Simon.—R.]