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200 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
might give us life ;
and He arose from the dead, and came to those who
were with Peter and John, and said to them, Feel and see that it is I ;
and He ate and drank luith them as being in the flesh and and
mingling ivith them (^Snyrn. i, 2, 3)'. The holy Ignatius.
. . ,'
They say
of the holy one that he was the disciple of John. And he was the child
whom our Lord took up in His arms and said, Except ye tiirn yourselves
and become as this child, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.
Peter was the first
bishop in Antioch, and after him was Euodius, and
after this one, third, behold Ignatius was upon the throne about eighty
years, until the ninth year of the reign of Trajan. Straightway Trajan
commanded, and they brought him to Rome, and he was devoured by
beasts on the tenth of the Latter Teshrin in the year 419 of the Greeks,
in the year in after the advent of our Lord. Ignatius is interpreted
to mean God-clad. May his prayer be with us. Amen.
Bodl. Marsh loi fol. 16: see the Catal. Cod. MSS Bodl. Syr. p. 461, no. 142.
The extract from Smyrn.
— i 3 is much abridged. It is overlooked by Cureton
and has never (to my knowledge) been printed before. The collection of extracts
in which it occurs follows immediately after a letter of Jacob
of Edessa, but
it does not appear from the Catalogue who made the collection. Nothing
is said of
the date of the ms. Dr Neubauer has kindly recollated the transcript which I made
from it some years ago, and Prof. Wright has added a translation.
On the confusion between the Former and the Latter Teshri (October and November),
as regards the date of Ignatius' martyrdom, see below, li. p. 420. Here also a
further error is committed. A letter has fallen out, and thus the loth is substituted
for the 17th, the correct day.
Again the year 419 of the Greeks does not correspond
with 1 1 1 of our Lord according to the common reckoning.
As regards the Syriac fragments,
the conclusions at which Merx arrives are
peculiarly unfortunate: see Meleteni. Ignat. pp. 64 sq, 79 sq, Zeitschy.f. Wisscnsch.
Theol. 1867, X. p. 91 sq. He supposes that there were three Syriac versions of these
epistles, (i)
The Cnretonian Syriac, which contained the seven epistles of the
Middle Form, and from which the three epistles of the Short Form first published by
Cureton are merely extracts or abridgements. This was the oldest translation of all.
The translator followed the usage of the Peshito Version of the N.T. in his rendering
of words. From this Syriac text the Armenian Version of the epistles was made.
(2) The Severian Syriac, so designated because the quotations in Severus were
taken from it. It was made 'before the times of the Arians,' apparently in the 3rd
centui7. This translation again contained the seven epistles of the Middle Recension,
but was more literal than the other. (3)
A third Syriac Version containing the
additional epistles (to Mary, Hero, the Antiochenes, Tarsians, and Philippians; Merx
does not say anything of the Epistle from Mary to Ignatius). To this belonged the
1
Neither
vyci^O nor vvOTSO gives any sense. Probably we should read
f^-^ f*^ *n»^ -\ ' t« 040T30, and in the Spirit mingled with the Father.
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The meaning of the letters ^r^^ in this heading is not apparent.