apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

262 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
The obligations of our Ignatian forger however to another source are
far greater than to any of the writers hitherto mentioned. The coincidences
with the Apostolic Constitutions are frequent and minute, as
may be seen by references to the notes in this edition; in. pp. 141, 143,
152, 155, 158, 159) 160, 161, 162, 166, 167, 168, 172, 174, 176, 177,
182, 187, 193, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 208, 210, 212, 213,
216, 217, 218, 223, 224, 225, 239, 240 sq, 242, 244, 246, 247, 248,
262, 264. These resemblances were far too prominent to escape notice,
and demanded an explanation from the very first. Those who, like
Turrianus, accepted both the Apostolic Constitutions and the pseudo-
Ignatian Epistles as genuine, had a very simple and natural solution.
Ignatius was supposed to have borrowed from Clement. Writers likewise,
such as Vedelius, who condemned the Ignatian Epistles as forged
or interpolated, supposed that this false Ignatius was indebted to the
Apostolic Constitutions for the passages which they had in common.
No one, so far as I know, maintained the converse solution,
that the
writer of the Apostolic Constitutions borrowed from these Ignatian
letters, whether the latter were regarded as genuine or as spurious.
Ussher was not satisfied with this view.
to him so striking that he could only
The resemblances seemed
ascribe the two works to a
single hand. Both the Apostolic Constitutions and the Ignatian
Epistles of the Long Recension were, he supposed, the work of one and
the same author, who lived in the sixth century {Ign. et Polyc. Ep.
p. Ixiii sq).
Pearson again (
Vind. Ign. p. 1 5 5 sq) started a theory of his own.
He supposed the existing eight books of the ApostoHc Constitutions to
have been put together subsequently to the age of Epiphanius from preexisting
StSao-KaXtai or SiSa^at, which bore the names of Clement,
Ignatius, Polycarp, etc. To these works, and not to the epistles of the
Apostolic fathers, he believed the reference to be in the Stichometria of
Nicephorus (see above, p. 225), where they are included among apocryphal
works. From the StSao-KaAta of Ignatius he conjectured that the
Ignatian interpolator borrowed the passages which the two documents
have in common, unless indeed (which he thought less probable) the
SiSaa-KaXta itself was made up from the pseudo-Ignatian epistles.
The hypothesis of Pearson has not found any favour. The solution
of Ussher also has commonly been rejected by subsequent writers on
the Apostolic Constitutions, though apparently not without one notable
exception (Lagarde J^ei. Jur. Eccl. Graec. p. vii)'.
Meanwhile the
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After this sheet was passed through the was published, this view found another
pressformyfirstedition, but beforemy work able advocate in Harnack Texte u. Uti-