apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

286 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
treatise was going through the press (1859), and that the work of
Merx two years later convinced him of his error. Even Volkmar confessed
that his opinion respecting the priority of the Curetonian letters
was shaken by Zahn's arguments {Jenaer Literaturzeitung 1874, no. 20,
p. 290, referred to by Zahn Ign. Ep. p. vi).
So likewise Renan {Les
Eva7igiles p. xv sq, 1877) has declared himself very decidedly against
the Curetonian theory. One by one,
it is losing its old adherents, and
no new champion has started up'. I venture to hope that the discussion
which follows will extinguish the last sparks of its waning
life. The investigation of diction and style has never been seriously
undertaken before, and the results will, I think, be considered
decisive.
The examination falls, as usual, under the two heads of external
and internal evidence.
I .
External Evidence.
To the term external evideice a wide interpretation will here be
given. It will thus comprise three heads : (i) Quotations and references;
(ii)
Documents and phenomena of the text; (iii) Historical
relations of the two recensions.
All (i)
the evidence of quotatiojis, it is urged, prior to Eusebius
points to the Short Recension as the original form. Every passage cited
during the Ante-nicene period
is found in the three Curetonian letters.
These quotations occur, it is true, in the epistles of the Middle Form
likewise ;
so that the fact, if fact it be, is not decisive. But still the
circumstance that we are not required to travel beyond the limits of
the Short Recension to satisfy the external evidence of the first two
Curetonian letters' he had afterwards below (p. 291 sq), of confounding various
retracted his former opinion on both recensions and various readings. Lipsius
'
questions alilie.' Nevertheless the infer- in his later writings still maintains that the
ence is unquestionably true. See for in- Curetonian letters preserve older readstance
the statement of Lipsius in the ings (as undeniably they do) than the
Jenaer Literaturzeitung p. 22, Ueber existing text of the Vossian, but he not
'
die Nichtursprlinglichkeit der Cureton- less distinctly abandons their priority as a
schen Recension der drei syrischen Briefe recension.
langst kein vStreit zwischen uns besteht.' -^
One very recent writer however
His previous statements in the Zeitschr. (Chastel Histoire du Christianisiiie I.
fUr Wissensch. Theol. xvii. p. 209 sq, pp. 113, 213 sq, Paris 1881) follows
though equally explicit, were misunder- Bunsen blindly, without showing any
stood by my critic, who fell into the error, knowledge of the more recent criticism
to which I shall have occasion to refer on the subject.