Clement of Alexandria believed that “Cephas” was different from “Peter”. This information comes to us from Eusebius (Eccles Hist, 1.12.2).Here is the text:
They say that Sosthenes also, who wrote tothe Corinthians with Paul, was one of them. This is the account of Clement in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, “When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face.”
The Hypotyposes of Clement of Alexandria is one of his lost works. It still existed in the 9th century, when Photius read it, but probably perished with so much else in the sack of Constantinople by the renegade army originally hired for the Fourth Crusade. Photius’ remarks are here, in the Bibliotheca, codex 109. (Hypotyposes = outlines) He isn’t very complimentary.
Read three volumes of the works of Clement, presbyter of Alexandria, entitled Outlines, The Miscellanies, The Tutor.
The Outlines contain a brief explanation and interpretation of certain passages in the Old and New Testaments. Although in some cases what he says appears orthodox, in others he indulges in impious and legendary fables. For he is of opinion that matter is eternal and that ideas are introduced by certain fixed conditions; he also reduces the Son to something created. He talks prodigious nonsense about the transmigration of souls and the existence of a number of worlds before Adam. He endeavours to show that Eve came from Adam, not as Holy Scripture tells us, but in an impious and shameful manner; he idly imagines that angels have connexion with women and beget children; that the Word was not incarnate, but only appeared so. He is further convicted of monstrous statements about two Words of the Father, the lesser of which appeared to mortals, or rather not even that one, for he writes : “The Son is called the Word, of the same name as” the Word of the Father, but this is not the Word that became flesh, nor even the Word of the Father, but a certain power of God, as it were an efflux from the Word itself, having become mind, pervaded the hearts of men.” All this he attempts to support by passages of Scripture. He talks much other blasphemous nonsense, either he or some one else under his name. These monstrous blasphemies are contained in eight books, in which he frequently discusses the same points and quotes passages from Scripture promiscuously and confusedly, like one possessed. The entire work includes notes on Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, St. Paul’s epistles, the Catholic epistles, and Ecclesiasticus. Clement was a pupil of Pantaenus, as he himself says. Let this suffice for the Outlines.
Codices 110 and 111 deal with the other two works.
Only fragments now exist of this commentary on the bible, which Eusebius tells us (HE 6.14.1) also included comments on the apocryphal works of Barnabas and the Apocalypse of Peter. Most of the few fragments are in Eusebius. Others are in the commentary of ps.Oecumenius, and John Moschus Pratum Spirituale. The Greek material can all be found in GCS 17, which is online somewhere, and translated here in the ANF 2.
There is also a Latin translation of a good chunk of it, which passes under the title Adumbrationes Clementi Alexandrini in epistolas canonicas. This was made in the days of Cassiodorus. It exists in two manuscripts. The first is in the public library of Laon, no. 96 (L). This is a parchment quarto which dates from the 8-9th century. The adumbrationes form folios 1-9 of this manuscript, and is followed by a Latin version of the commentary of Didymus the Blind on the letter of James. Various pages of the manuscript are disordered.
The other manuscript (M) is in Berlin, part of the Sir Thomas Phillips collection from Cheltenham, no. 1665. This is a parchment codex of 184 pages, of the 13th century. The first 11 pages of the codex contain the adumbrationes, followed by a work of Didymus the Blind, Bede on Acts, Bede’s retraction on Acts, his tract on the canonical letters, and an Epistola ad Accam. The manuscript has a note that it belonged to a monastery of “St. Mary of the mountain of God”. It was in Paris in the library of the Jesuits, then passed into the Meerman library, where it was no. 443, and then was bought by Sir Thomas Phillips.
There may be passages from the text also in a manuscript in the Laurentian library in Florence, (Pluteu 17.17), a Latin catena on these letters of the bible from Bede, Clement, Didymus and Augustine.
The text was first published by Margaret de la Bigne in 1575, in her Sacra bibliotheca sanctorum patrum, col. 625-634. Nothing is said of the manuscript used. This text was reprinted several times; J. Fell in 1683, Th. Jttig (1700), J. Potter (1715), R. Klotz (vol. 4, 1834), Chr. C. Jos. Bunsen (1854), and L. Dindorf (1869).
A critical edition was published by Zahn in Supplementum Clementinum, Forsuchungen zur Geschichte des Neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur, III, pp. 64-103, which edits all the fragments; the critical edition of the adumbrationes is on p.79-93. The editio princeps (P) and the Dindorf edition (D) supplement the two mss (see Zahn, p.10-16).
The comments in the text relate to 1 Peter and 1 John and 2 John. An English translation of the adumbrationes is in the ANF 2, here.
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