apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

246 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
Ignatian Epistles which occur only in one form and which I have tacitly
assumed to belong to the Long Recension. Is this assumption justifiable
or not Secondly. Having thus ascertained how many epistles belong
to the Long Recension, we shall be in a position to answer another and a
more important question, to which the previous one forms a preliminary
step. At what date and with what object was this Recension compiled
I. In considering the relation of the Additional Epistles to the
Seven of the Long Recension,
I shall reserve for the moment the
Epistle to the Philippians, because the external evidence is slightly
deficient, and for this and other reasons a separate authorship has been
claimed for it
by some able critics. With this reservation the Additional
Epistles are five in number; the letter of Mary with the reply of
Ignatius, the letter to Hero, and the letters to the Tarsians and Antiochenes.
The points of investigation then are twofold: First^ Is the
resemblance of these letters to the Seven of the Long Recension sufficiently
close to justify us in assigning them to the same author: and
Secondly, Does the external evidence— the phenomena of mss and the
catena of quotations
— lead to the same or to an opposite conclusion
(i) If we had only internal testimony to guide us, the evidence
would even then be overwhelming. In the investigation which follows
I shall content myself with indicating the lines of search without following
them out in detail.
Any one who will read carefully through in
succession the interpolated portions of the Seven Epistles in the Long
Recension and then the Additional Epistles, may easily satisfy himself as
to the strength of the position. We find in the Additional Epistles (a)
the same employment of scriptural texts and scriptural examples, (b)
the same doctrinal complexion and nomenclature, (c) the same literary
plagiarisms, and (d) the same general style and phraseology, which
characterize the Long Recension — these being just the points which
differentiate the Long Recension from the Middle.
(a) While the Middle Recension is
very sparing oi Biblical quotations,
so that the whole number throughout the Seven Epistles may be
counted on the fingers, and even these (except in one or two instances)
are not formally cited, the Long Recension abounds in them. Even in
the passages otherwise copied bodily from the Middle Recension they
are interpolated at every possible opportunity; and the portions which
are peculiar to the Long
— Recension more especially the doctrinal
portions — frequently consist
of a string of Scriptural passages threaded
together by explanatory remarks from the author himself (see esp. Ephes.