apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE CURETONIAN LETTERS. 283
to Cureton's view combined critics
of two directly antagonistic schools.
On the one hand its ranks included writers like Baur {Die ignatianischen
Briefe u. ihr timester Kritiker, eine Streitschrift gegen Herrn Bimsen,
1848) and Hilgenfeld {Die apostolischen Viiter p. 274 sq, 1853), who
denied the authenticity of any recension of the Ignatian letters,
being forced by their theological position to take this side. If for
instance Baur had accepted the Ignatian letters as genuine even in
their shortest form, he would have put an engine into the hands of his
opponents, which would have shattered at a single blow all the
Tubingen theories respecting the growth of the Canon and the history
of the early Church. But as he had already, in a treatise published
before the discovery of the Curetonian letters (
Ueber den Ursprwig des
Episcopats p. 149 sq), placed the Vossian letters as early as the age
of the Antonines, he could not have admitted the priority of the
Curetonian letters without dating them so far back as to place them
within or near to the age of Ignatius
himself Thus it was a matter of
life and death to theologians of the Tiibingen school to take their side
against the Curetonian letters. At the same time critical conservatism
prompted writers of a wholly different type such as Denzinger Ueber
(
die Aeclitheit des bisherigen Textes der ignatianischen Briefe, Wiirzburg
1849) and Uhlhorn [ZeitscJirift f. die historische Theologie 185 1, pp. 3 sq,
247 sq) to range themselves in the same ranks. This view was
adopted also in their subsequent editions by two principal editors of
the Patres Apostolici, Hefele (ed. 3, 1847) and Jacobson (ed. 4, prol.
p. Ivii), while a third, Dressel, whose first edition (1857) appeared after
Cureton's discovery, speaks in a very confused and unintelligible way
(prol. p. xxix), accepting neither recension as free from spurious
matter and declining to pronounce on the question of priority. The
priority of the Vossian letters was also maintained by two Oriental
scholars of name, Petermann and Merx. Of the edition of the Ignatian
Epistles by the former, which appeared in the same year (1849) with
Cureton's larger work the Corpus Ignatianum, and has contributed
greatly to the solution of the Ignatian question by the republication
of the Armenian version, much has been said already (p. 86 sq),
and I shall have to recur to the subject again'. The work of
Merx also {Meletemata Ignatiana 1861) has been mentioned more
than once (pp. 105 sq, 192 sq, 200 sq). On the same side also were
ranged not a few other writers of repute, more especially in England.
^
It is characteristic of Ussher's critical ing an Armenian version wliich should
foresight that two centuries earlier he had throw light on the Ignatian question (see
contemplated the probability of discover- Life and Works XVI. p. 64).