(iii) justification (2.6). The material discussed above is sufficient to
show how the Greco-Roman terminology of recognitive knowledge
starts to interact with Christian theology. We now proceed to describe
a significant early text in which this interaction occurs.
The Aristoteliananagnorisisbecomes connected with biblical ter-
minology inRecognitions,a Pseudo-Clementine work that Jerome
calls‘Anagnorismos, that is, Recognition’in hisApologia adversus
libros Rufini.^18 This work has been preserved in the Latin translation
of Rufin (around 406CE) and is normally known asRecognitions.It
relates the story of Clement, who meets apostles and his own family
members, discovering their identities in the context of his own life
story. While the title primarily refers to the encounters between
Clement and his family members, the Latin work also contains a
rich variety of usages that speak about the recognition of God and the
truth. The Latin text is available in dozens of manuscripts extending
from thefifth to thefifteenth centuries and can thus be argued to have
had, in spite of its somewhat heterodox ideas, a considerable recep-
tion history.^19
The LatinRecognitionscan also be compared with another pseudo-
Clementine work,Homilies, which survives in Greek and contains a
number of identical or similar passages.^20 Interestingly, the Latin
Recognitionsdoes not very often use the wordsrecognoscoandrecog-
nitio. Some occurrences are found inRec.9, 36–7, a passage in which
Clement’s family members rediscover each other in an Aristotelian
manner. InRec.7, 36:1, 3, the encounter between mother and son is
first described by the verbrecognoscoand then the nounagnitio.
Similarly, inRec.7, 23:3, 5 the recognition between mother and son
isfirst described byrecognosco; shortly afterwards, the process of this
encounter is characterized asordo agnitionis.
The work thus evidently uses bothrecognitioandagnitioas syn-
onymous withanagnorisis. This is not surprising, as the semantics of
(^18) Apol. adv. Ruf.CCSL 79, lib. 2 par. 17, l. 1.
(^19) Vähäkangas 2010, 22. See also the editor’s introduction toRec.
(^20) For the general nature ofRecognitionsandHomilies, see Vähäkangas 2010. The
French editionLes Reconnaissancescompares the Latin and Greek versions exten-
sively. On p. 373, the French edition points out that the GreekHomiliesuseanagnor-
ismoswhere the LatinRecognitionshasagnitio. I use the Latin edition fromDie
griechischen christlichen Schriftstellerand the English translation available inClem-
entina(sometimes slightly modified).
48 Recognition and Religion