apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

284 IlPISTLES of S. IGNATIUS.
The general bearing of the controversy will have appeared from this
sketch of its history. While the advocates of the priority of the Vossian
letters took different sides on the question of their genuineness, the champions
of the Curetonian letters almost to a man maintained these to be
the authentic work of Ignatius. There was however one exception.
Volkmar {Evaigelien p. 636 sq, 1870; comp. Ursprung uns. Evang.
p. 51 sq, 1866) advocated the priority of the Curetonian letters, supposing
that the Vossian collection was enlarged from them about
A.D. 170; while at the same time he condemned the Curetonian letters
themselves as spurious. This theory stands self-condemned, and naturally
it has failed to find supporters'.
It would not be easy to overrate the services which Cureton has
rendered to the study of the Ignatian letters by the publication and
elucidation of the Syriac texts. The questions also which he started
or revived and the information respecting the past history of the controversy
which he gathered together have not been without their
value. It
may confidently be expected that the ultimate issue will be
the settlement of the Ignatian question on a more solid basis than
would have been possible without his labours. But assuredly this
settlement will not be that which he too boldly predicted. Neither
his method nor his results will stand the test of a searching criticism.
His method is vitiated by a threefold confusion. First, there is the
confusion, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter (p. 291),
between various forms or recensions of the epistles and various readings
in particular passages. Secondly, there is a studied attempt to confound
together the evidence for the Vossian letters and for the epistles
of the Long Recension, as if the external testimony in the two cases
stood on the same level. This confusion I have already discussed at
1
In the Contemporary Revieiv, Feb. curtness in the style, but the epistles
1875, p. 346, I placed the author of read more consecutively, without faults
Supernatural Religion in the same cate- of construction or grammar, and passages
gory with Volkmar, as ' assuming the which in the Greek text were confused
priority of the Curetonian letters.' I did and almost unintelligible have become
so on the strength of such passages as quite clear in the Syriac. The interpolathis
(.S".
i. I. p. 262sq); ' Those who still tions in the text in fact had been so
maintain the superior authenticity of the clumsily made that they had obscured
Greek Shorter version argue that the the meaning,' with much more to the
Syriac is an epitome of the Greek. This same effect. I am still at a loss to underdoes
not however seem tenable when the stand what other sense could be assigned
matter is carefully examined. Although to these words ;
but the author (6". R. i.
so much is absent from the Syriac ver- p. xlv, ed. 6) repudiates my interpretasion,
not only is there no interruption of tion of his language,
the sense and no obscurity or undue