apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

326 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
The date of this is
Syriac abridgment a matter of inferior
moment; nor is it ascertainable except within somewhat wide limits
of time.
The earliest ms (2j) belongs to the year a.d. 534
or thereabouts
(see above, p. 72). This ms indeed only contains the Epistle to
Polycarp, but the abridgments of the two remaining epistles, which
are found in the later MSS (S^Sg), were evidently made by the same
hand. This earliest MS however is
evidently not the archetype. It
already contains a few false readings, where the text is correctly given in
the later mss (§ 5 yap for Se, together with other slight errors). Yet
these phenomena are such that 2j might well have been copied
directly from the original ms. Thus, so far as the evidence goes,
the Syriac abridgment might have been made as late as the early
decades of the sixth century.
The terminu}\i ad quern being thus fixed, we have next to search
for the terminus a quo. But here the data are still less satisfactory.
The first requisite is to assign a date to the unabridged Syriac Version
(see above, p. 91 sq). This however is not an easy matter. If this
version originally comprised the six Additional Letters, it cannot have
been made till after the middle of the fourth century when these letters
were forged (see above, p. 257 sq, p. 273), and some little time would
probably elapse before they were attached to the genuine letters.
Without a more thorough examination of the fragments of this Syriac
Version and of the Armenian Version which was derived from it,
it would be premature
to assert with absolute confidence that the
version of the six Additional Letters proceeded
from the same hand
as the version of the genuine Seven Epistles, though I have not yet
seen sufficient reason to suspect the contrary. Supposing this unity
of workmanship to be granted, the Syriac Version cannot well date
much earlier than a.d. 400. Nor can we place
it much later, if at
least Armenian scholars are right, or nearly right, in their conclusion
that the Armenian Version itself belongs to the fifth century (see above,
p. 86 sq).
Yet this date for the Syriac Version is not without its difficulties.
A passage in Ephraem Syrus (f a.d. 373) seems to be a reminis-
Version (see above, p. 133); (3) the open- p. 76); (5) the loose and modified quotaing
of the Epistle to the Romans in a tions in the Arabic (iii. p. 301 sq, see
Monte Cassino MS (see p. 131), where no above, p. 275). I have not reckoned in
reason can be assigned why so much and this enumeration mere collections of exno
more should be given; (4) an extract tracts, whether Greek or Syriac (e.g. those
from the Epistle to the Ephesians with of S, described above, p. 91 sq), which
modifications in Paris. Graec. 950 (see present no extraordinary features.