apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE CURETONIAN LETTERS. 28 1
who prosecuted some enquiries but without success {Life and Works xvi.
pp. 53, 64). Again in 1680, 1681, Fell, at that time Dean of Christ
Church, made attempts through R. Huntington, then British Chaplain
at Aleppo, but afterwards Bishop of E.aphoe, to obtain a copy of this
Syriac version. Extracts from the correspondence of Huntington with
certain dignitaries of the Oriental Churches are given by Cureton
(C /. p. xxiv sq) from D. Roherti Huntingtoni Rapotensis Episiolae
(Londini 1704). Huntington's endeavours however failed, though
strangely enough among other places he visited the very convent of the
Nitrian desert in which the mss of the Syriac epistles were afterwards
discovered. At a later date (a.d. 17 16) Renaudot in his Lihirgiarum
Orientalium Collectio (11. pp. 225, 488, ed. Francof 1847) inferred the
existence of an ancient Syriac version of the letters of Ignatius from
the fact that he found several extracts in a collection of canons.
These
extracts are designated S,
above (p. 91 sq), and the ms used by
Renaudot {Sangerm. 38)
is the same which is there described. The extracts
themselves are printed at length below, iii. p. 93 sq. A few years
later (a.d. 1725) J.
S. Assemani {Bibl.
Orient, in. i.
p, 16) printed in the
original Syriac the Catalogue of Ebed-Jesu already mentioned and in
;
his notes and elsewhere {ib. i. p. 606) he speaks of a Syriac copy of the
Acts of Ignatius in the Vatican Library, contained in a volume of martyrologies
which was brought by himself from the monastery of Scete in
the Nitrian desert in 17 15 {Bibl. Orient, i.
praef. § xi).
This MS has
been described above (p. 107).
From that time forward nothing more
is heard of a Syriac version for nearly a century and a quarter.
This long period of silence was terminated by the appearance of
Cureton's Antient Syriac Version of the Epistles of S. Ignatius
to S.
Folycarp, tJie Ephesians, and the Romans., London 1845. This version
was discovered by the learned editor in two mss which had been procured
in recent years for the British Museum {Add. 12 175, and Add.
14618; described above, p. 72). Its pubUcation was the signal for the
revival of the Ignatian question. The controversy, which had long
been flickering in the embers, now burst out anew into a flame, and has
burnt brightly ever since. The Syriac version, as pubhshed by Cureton,
contained only the three epistles' above named, and these in a shorter
form than either of the Greek and Latin texts. The editor contended
that the genuine Ignatius had at length been discovered, and that the
remaining four epistles of the Vossian collection, as well as the
1
It should be mentioned however that Trallian Epistle (§§ 4, 5) of tlie Middle
at the close of the Epistle to the Romans Form,
is
incorporated a fragment
from the