Section 246
110Cf. Preaching of Peter, quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 6.5.41.6: “we who worship God in a new way, as the third race (τϱίτω γένει), are Christians”; Ep. Diog. 1, “this new race” (ϰαινòν τοῦτο γένοσ).
111The food restrictions would have prevented Peter from accepting Cornelius’s hospitality, but for his vision at Joppa (Acts 10:28). Cf. Letter of Aristeas 139: “Our lawgiver . . . fenced us round (πεϱιέφϱαξεν) with impregnable ramparts and walls of iron, that we might not mingle at all with any of the other nations, but remain pure in body and soul.”
112H. Schlier, Christus und die Kirche im Epheserbrief (Tübingen, 1930), pp. 18–26; Der Brief an die Epheser, pp. 126–33.
113This is particularly so with regard to the passages from Mandaean literature which Schlier adduces from R. Reitzenstein, Das mandäische Buch des Herrn der Grösse und die Evangelienüberlieferung (Heidelberg, 1919), p. 32; Das iranische Erlösungsmysterium (Bonn, 1921), pp. 60, 267. The surviving Mandaean texts belong to the fifth century and later, even if they attest earlier concepts. Apart from Mandaean texts, Schlier adduces parallels to the heavenly barrier from Valentinianism (apud Iren., Haer. 1.1.2), in which it was variously called ὃϱοσ and σταυϱóσ, and from the Acts of Thomas 32, where the serpent claims to have “entered through the barrier (φϱαγμòσ) into Paradise”; cf. G. Bornkamm, Mythos und Legende in den apokryphen Thomas-Akten (Göttingen, 1933), p. 29; A. F. J. Klijn, The Acts of Thomas (Leiden, 1962), p. 225.