apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

SPURIOUS AND INTERPOLATED EPISTLES. 251
The testimony of Theodoret (see p. 170 sq), who wrote about the
middle of the fifth century, if not so decisive, tends in the same direction.
Though quoting somewhat largely from the Ignatian letters, he does
not quote beyond the Hmits of the Seven. The same is true of Timotheus
of Alexandria (p. 173 sq), who wrote a few years later, and of
Severus of Antioch (p. 178 sq), whose literary activity belongs to the
earlier decades of the sixth century. The silence of this last-mentioned
writer is the more significant, as he quotes largely and widely from the
letters of Ignatius.
In fact the tenour of external evidence will be sufficiently
plain when it is stated that, whereas the Seven Epistles are
quoted by a fairly continuous series of Greek, Latin, and Syriac writers,
beginning with Irenseus and Origen in the second and third centuries,
not a single quotation from the Additional Letters has been discovered
prior to the last decade of the sixth century at the very earliest (see
above, p. 205).
Moreover a comparison of the positions
which the six Additional
25 TTjv 'luduvov (pepofJLivTjv TTporipav),
'either did not exist at the time when he
which in this same passage he classes wrote or were rejected by him as spurious
among the ofioKoyovfxeva, and of which (p. 337).' He says, 'One obvious reason
he has said just before irapa re toIs vvv why he should have omitted to mention
/cat Tols ir dpxo-^ois avaix