apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

GENUINENESS OF THE EPISTLE. 579
This arbitrary procedure of Daille had nothing to recommend it ;
but it was forced upon him by the exigencies of his position. As regards
external testimony, the 13th chapter
stands in a more favourable
position than the main part of the epistle, for it is
quoted by Eusebius.
Nevertheless this view has found some few advocates in later times.
Thus Bunsen more especially {Ign. v. A fit.
p. 107 sq) adopted it,
assigning the interpolations to the middle of the second century.
A more subtle and elaborate theory of interpolation was propounded
by Ritschl {EntstcJmng der Altkatholischcji Kii'che p. 584 sq, ed. 2, 1857).
He acknowledged the futility of the objection based on the expression
'
qui cum eo sunt ',
and pronounced the opinion of Daille and Bunsen to
be 'unfortunate' (p. 587). His own method was different. The rejection
of the testimony to the Ignatian letters was ostensibly not the starting
point but the goal of his speculations ; though this rejection was plainly
the underlying influence which prompted his criticisms. He set himself
to investigate the sequence of topics in the letter ; and, as a result of
this investigation, he rejected § 3 and § 9 as interpolations, because they
interfered with this sequence. For the same reason he struck out part of
§ 1 1 'qui ignorant. ..nondum cognoveramus'. In these passages however,
thus rejected on independent grounds, the connexion of the Philippians
with S. Paul and with Ignatius is mentioned. Thus he imagined that
he had arrived at the motive of the interpolator, whose object
it was to
establish this connexion. Consequently § 13, which contains the reference
to the Ignatian letters, must likewise be rejected with the other
passages which mention the martyr or the Apostle. He supposed the
interpolator to have been the same person who expanded the three
genuine Ignatian Letters of the Short Form into the seven of the
Vossian Recension, and to have done his work between 140— a.d. 168.
Ritschl's theory will be more fully discussed hereafter. At present
sufficient to remark that this principle, which demands a
it is
strictly logical
and natural
order and refuses to admit any digression however germane
in itself, would be fatal to not a few confessedly genuine documents of
early Christianity and that (to give an example) S. Paul's Epistles to the
Corinthians would be cut into shreds by the critical sheers so applied.
Ritschl's view found some favour, when it was first
put forward.
Being intimately bound up with the theory which accepted the Curetonian
letters as the original form of the Ignatian Epistles, it was
welcomed by the advocates of this theory. Hence its
adoption by
Lipsius {Ueher das Verhdltniss etc.
p. 14), Bohringer [Kirchettgeschichte
in Biographien i. p. 49 sq, ed. 2, 1873), and others. As the priority
of the Curetonian Ignatius has now been generally abandoned, we
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