apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

of Renan.
THE GENUINENESS. 429
He cannot resist the evidence, external' as well as internal,
in favour of the six epistles, and supposes them to have been written
about A.D. 150 by an Ignatius, not however the bishop of Antioch but
a namesake distinguished from him by the surname Theophorus, who
was not a bishop but ' a prominent member of the Antiochene Church
at a later date'. As regards the bishop, he accepts the statement of
John Malalas, that he suffered martyrdom at Antioch under Trajan.
To support this novel treatment of Ignatius, he is obliged to adopt a
novel treatment of Polycarp also. He neither accepts wholly nor
rejects wholly the 13th chapter of Polycarp's Epistle, in which reference
is made to the Epistles of Ignatius, but supposes the beginning and end
of the passage to be interpolated. The Epistle to the Romans was
forged, he believes, before a.d. 180— igo (at which time it is
quoted by
Irenceus), and the motive was to supplement the allusions in the genuine
letters and thus furnish a commentary to them by an account of the
saint's coming martyrdom, but the fabricator confused the writer of the
letters with the bishop of Antioch.
In a later number of the same periodical (May 1887, p. 272 sq) he
continues the subject. He suggests that the name 'Ignatius' has been
inserted or substituted in the six epistles, and that slight interpolations
have been made here and there to bring out the idea that the writer was
on his way to martyrdom at Rome. Correspondingly he supposes the
name of Ignatius in § 9,
and the particulars respecting him in § 13, of
Polycarp's Epistle, to have been interpolated but he holds that I
;
have
shown § 3 to belong to the genuine Polycarp. He holds that the Peregrinus
of Lucian is the same person with the writer of these epistles,
but he does not suppose that Lucian was directly acquainted with them.
He considers that the writer of the six epistles was acquainted with the
Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. The Letter of the
Smyrnseans, relating the martyrdom of Polycarp, he supposes to have
borrowed from the account of Lucian, and not conversely. To the
writer of the Epistle to the Romans he attributes the introduction of
the name Ignatius and the other interpolations in the six epistles.
This theory
is
open to all the objections which hold against Renan's
view, while not a few others besides might be alleged against it.
Though it is offered by its author as ' the solution of the Ignatian question',
I can hardly anticipate that he will succeed in convincing others,
1
What does he mean (p. iiS) by Trajan The language of Clement sugquoting
'Clement' as an authority for gests that he was not unacquainted with
the statement that the letters were written these letters but does not go beyond this
by Ignatius bishop of Antioch under (see above, p. 143).