Hegesippus and His Memoirs

Hegesippus, in the five books of Memoirs that have come down to us, has left the fullest record of his own views. In them he shows that on a journey as far as Rome he met a great many bishops, and that he received the same teaching from them all. We may as well hear what he says after some remarks about Clement’s letter to the Corinthians: [a] “And the church of the Corinthians remained in the right teaching until Primus was bishop in Corinth. I spent time with them on my voyage to Rome, and stayed with the Corinthians a good many days, during which we were refreshed together in the right teaching. [b] When I was in Rome, I drew up the succession down to Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. Soter succeeded Anicetus, and after him came Eleutherus. And in every succession and in every city, things are as the law and the prophets and the Lord proclaim.” [c]

The same writer also sets out the beginnings of the heresies of his own time, in these words: “After James the Just had been martyred, as the Lord also was, on the same account, Symeon the son of Clopas, who was the Lord’s uncle, was appointed bishop next. All put him forward as the second, since he was a cousin of the Lord. This is why they called the church a virgin, for it had not yet been corrupted by empty talk. [e] But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began secretly to corrupt it. He started from the seven sects among the people, to which he himself belonged. From these came Simon, from whom the Simonians come; Cleobius, from whom the Cleobians; Dositheus, from whom the Dositheans; Gorthaeus, from whom the Goratheni; and the Masbotheans. From these came the Menandrianists, the Marcianists, the Carpocratians, the Valentinians, the Basilidians and the Saturnilians, each bringing in his own opinion, privately and differently. From these came false Christs, false prophets and false apostles, who split the unity of the Church with corrupting words against God and against his Christ.” [g] The same writer also records the heresies that arose long ago among the Jews, saying: “Among the circumcision, among the children of Israel, there were different opinions against the tribe of Judah and the Christ. They were these: Essenes, Galileans, Hemerobaptists, Masbotheans, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees.”

He writes a great many other things as well, some of which we have already mentioned, setting out the accounts at their proper times. He quotes some things from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac, and in particular from the Hebrew tongue, which shows that he had come to the faith from among the Hebrews; and he mentions other things as coming from the unwritten tradition of the Jews. [i] And not only he, but Irenaeus too and the whole company of the ancients, called the Proverbs of Solomon the All-Virtuous Wisdom. In discussing the so-called apocryphal books, he records that some of them were fabricated in his own time by certain heretics. But now we must pass on to another. [j]