apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

412 EPISTLES OF S. IGNATIUS.
been a forgery, and the reiterations had arisen from want of originality,
to the Romans
they would have appeared not less in the Epistle
than in the other letters. The same remark applies, though in a less
degree, to the Epistle to Polycarp. Indeed we may say generally
and works
that a forger, who has his time altogether at his disposal
with a literary aim,
is much more likely to avoid repetition than a
person writing under the conditions under which Ignatius is assumed to
have written.
(4)
A far more serious ground of attack than any of those which
have hitherto been dealt with is the charge of a^iachronisms in the
vocabulary of these epistles. If this attack could be sustained, we
should be constrained to confess that they were either spurious or
interpolated. For the moment it has seemed to yield signal triumphs
to the assailants; but in every instance the victory has been reversed.
One such anachronism was discovered in the use of the word
'
leopard ' {Eom. 5 evSeSe/xeVos 8eKa XeoTrapSot),
which Bochart confidently
asserted to have been unknown before the age of Constantine, thus
charging the supposed forger of these letters with ante-dating the word
by two centuries or thereabouts; and the objection has been revived by
later antagonists. The question will be found treated at some length in
my note on the passage, 11. p. 2 1 2 sq. It is sufficient here to say that
Pearson at once proved the extravagance of this assertion by producing
an example of the word as early as Severus a.d. (c. 202) and thus convicting
Bochart of an error of a whole century at all events. I have
been able to carry the evidence much farther back. The word occurs
in a rescript of the emperors Marcus and Commodus (a.d. 177
— 180)
and also in an early treatise of Galen. In neither passage is there any
indication that the word is new, but on the contrary
it is used as a
perfectly familiar term. The passage in Galen carries back the direct
evidence of its use within about half a century of Ignatius. As a very
imperfect knowledge and casual research have enabled me to supply
these important passages which have hitherto escaped notice,
it is not
unreasonable to surmise that in the extant literature of the intervening
period other examples may occur which have not yet been brought to
light. But even if no more evidence is
forthcoming, the facts before us
are amply sufficient to refute the objection. For what is the state of the
H. viii.
case Half a century before Ignatius, Pliny uses language {N. 1
'
7 leones quos pardi generavere which shows that the
') word, if not
actually created, was already on the eve of creation ;
while half a century
later than this date it is obviously a familiar word. The presumption