apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

THE CURETONIAN LETTERS. 319
the Epistle to the TraUians. We know of no reason why he should
make any allusion to his knowledge of heavenly things when writing to
the Trallians
;
nor even is there any apparent purpose to be gathered
from that epistle for his doing so, as it now stands.' There is no more
difficulty in understanding the purpose of Ignatius,
than there is in
understanding the purpose of S. Paul in the loth, nth, and 12th chapters
of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he too is
deahng
with false teachers, where he too lays stress on his spiritual illumination,
where he too
fluctuates between the dread of boasting and the
necessity of boasting. Indeed we can hardly resist the conclusion
that, when Ignatius wrote this passage, the spirit,
if not the very
language, of the Aposde thus writing to the Corinthians was present to
his mind.
On the other hand these two chapters {Trail. 4, 5) have no special
propriety at the close of the Epistle to the Romans. Cureton indeed
(p. xlvi) invents a motive for their insertion ;
have spoken of his great spiritual knowledge, and to have pressed
it as
'
The Romans seem to
an argument why he should desire to have his life spared for the benefit
'
of the Church : and treating this fiction as a fact, he proceeds to argue
thereupon for the propriety of the position which these chapters occupy
in the Curetonian recension. But the very necessity of such an
the fact that
assumption betrays the weakness of the case. Beyond the Episde to the Romans is concerned almost entirely with his approaching
martyrdom, and that in the course of these chapters reference
is made to it, there is no link of connexion. On the other hand, when
he speaks to his readers as children who could not digest strong meat,
this language is far more appropriate as addressed to the Trallians of
whose spiritual danger he had personal knowledge and to whom in
other parts of the letter he utters words of warning, than to the Romans
with whom he was unacquainted and whom he addresses as <
teachers
of others ' (§ 3) and describes as ' filtered clean from any strange colouring'
of heresy (inscr.)'.
1
In the Parall. Reg. v. xiii (see that part of Trallians subjoined to the
above, p. 213) the passage from TraH. 4 Epistle of (sic) Romans in the shorter
XPV^ T'po-oT-qros iv V,
KaTaXverai 6 apxuv version. Hence our MS may be regarded
rod aluivos toutov 5id/3oXo; is
quoted as as correct in its reference, and we have
from ' Ignatius to the Romans '. On this thus our first testimony
to f/ie existence
slender basis Prof. Rendel Harris {Ig- of the shorter version in Greek.'' The
natiana p. 95 sq ; see above, p. 110) italics are his own. Though oid^oXos is
builds an amazing superstructure. 'What found only in the text of the Long Rewe
have to notice ',
'
he writes, is that the cension, I waive this point, for it may, as
passage is indeed from Trallians, but from he contends, be ' only a question of read-