apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

SPURIOUS AND INTERPOLATED EPISTLES. 253
natural consequence of the addition of the Acts of Martyrdom at the
end of all the epistles; for, as the Epistle to the Romans was already
incorporated in these Acts, its removal from an earlier place in the collection
followed as a matter of course. Whether the addition of these
Acts and the consequent displacement of the Epistle to the Romans
took place simultaneously with the attachment of the Additional Epistles
or not, may be an open question. In the Armenian collection the
Epistle to the Romans has not been displaced— the Acts of Martyrdom
not having been attached to this collection; and the Additional Epistles
therefore stand by themselves, as an appendix. On the other hand
they do not, as in the Greek and Latin collection, occur in the same
order as in the Long Recension. A principle however is discernible in
the arrangement. The Epistle to the Antiochenes, as being addressed
to Ignatius' own church, stands first; and the five remaining letters are
arranged in a chronological sequence. But the main inference from
both collections is the same. In each case a person, possessing the
Seven Epistles of the Middle Form, comes across a copy of the Long
Recension which contains thirteen epistles, and he sets himself to supply
the apparent defect in his own collection. This he does by picking out
the missing epistles from the recension which had thus accidentally
fallen into his hands and adding them to his own copy.
Thus the evidence of the mss confirms the result of the examination
of the Additional Epistles themselves and assigns them to the same
pen which interpolated the Seven Epistles, or in other words to the
Recension. Of five out of the six this seems to be
author of the Long
absolutely certain.
But respecting the remaining one — the Epistle to the
— Philippians some doubt has been entertained. It is
wanting in the
Latin and Greek' copies of the Middle Recension, and it stands last in
the Armenian collection of the same. Again it is thought to be
deficient in external evidence as compared with the other Additional
Letters. For these reasons there is at least a presumption that it
was written later than the other five and by a different hand. This
suspicion moreover has been thought to be confirmed by the style of
the epistle,
in which distinctive peculiarities have been discerned ^
^
Though the existing Greek MS (the
fair confidence to say that they agreed in
Medicean) of this collection is imper- omitting this epistle,
feet at the end, so that the part which
-
The Epistle to the Philippians was
ought to contain the Epistle to Philip- assigned to a different author from the
plans is wanting, yet the close resemblance other forged epistles by Ussher (pp. Ixxix,
of this MS to the MSS of the Latin Version cxxviii) and this view is
; apparently
in all the main features enables us with Cureton's, C. I. pp. 338, 341.