apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

6l8 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
and celebrating the day of his heavenly birth (§ i8). But what is there
anachronistic in all this
which shows that
Half a century later TertuUian uses language
the ceremonial commemoration of the dead was far
more developed than as here represented {de Coron. 3 'Oblationes pro
defunctis pro natalitiis annua die facimus'). There is no mention here,
as in TertuUian, of oblations for the dead. The sole object
of the
commemoration is stated to be 'the remembrance of those athletes
who have gone before and the training and preparation of those who
shall come after.' What is there unnatural in this What is there
which might not have occurred in the very earhest ages of persecution
But, says Keim, nothing of the kind is mentioned in the kindred
document containing the narrative of the martyrdoms in the Galilean
Churches a few years later (a.d. 177). It would be more correct to
say that nothing is mentioned in the extracts which Eusebius has preserved
{H. E. V. i).
The grief of the Christians at not being allowed
to bury the bodies is alone mentioned in these extracts. The actual
gathering up of the reliques was prevented by the action of the heathen.
What the Christians might have done otherwise, we cannot say. Moreover
Eusebius, when speaking of the disposal of the bodies by the
heathen, distinctly states that at this point the document before him
contained much more than he quotes (§
62 totjtois £^175 ^.S tVepa (^acri).
It is
by no means improbable therefore that it did refer to the frustration
of the pious intention of the brethren to hold an annual commemoration
over the graves of the martyrs.
But even if the document, when entire,
had said not a word about this desire, no inference could have been safely
drawn from its silence. Long after the commemoration of the martyrs'
'birth-days' had become habitual, there is more commonly than not an
absence of any reference to the subject in Acts of Martyrdom. Thus
the test is fallacious. Nor can it be a surprise that the Jews should
work upon the fears of the heathen by representing the danger of Polycarp's
becoming an object of worship, if his body were restored to the
Christians. Would this appear so very extravagant to the heathen feeling
of that age It is a heathen writer Lucian, who only a few years later
(a.d. 165) tells us that the Christians held Peregrinus in his lifetime to
be a god (see above, p. 137).
We know also, that this same Peregrinus
after his death received divine honours and that oracular shrines and
temples were built in his name, not by the Christians, but by the heathen
themselves. It must seem strange therefore that Keim, while himself
referring to Lucian (p. 123), can regard this notice in the Smyrnaean
letter as a formidable objection to its genuineness. The Christians
indeed were much more likely to
be misunderstood by the heathen in