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LETTER OF THE SMYRN^EANS. 623
the one supposed anachronism, on which special stress is laid, has
disappeared'.
I should be very far however from admitting that, if the expression
had occurred here in its later technical sense, this occurrence would
condemn the document. There were already at the time of Polycarp's
martyrdom sectarian communities, BasiHdeans, Marcionites, Valentinians,
and others. What he himself thought of such sectarians is clear from
the narrative of his encounter with Marcion. But the idea of the
'
Catholic Church ' is the correlative to the existence of the sects. It
is therefore simply a question of evidence how soon the word itself
appears in this technical sense and the ;
acknowledged examples of this
use (in the Muratorian Fragment and in Clement of Alexandria) are
sufficiently near to the date of Polycarp's martyrdom to remove any
difficulty in its occurrence at this epoch. Every expression must appear
for the first time somewhere ;
and there is no valid reason why the
Smyrnrean Letter should be excluded from the competition
for the
earliest example.
All these characteristics therefore are insufficient to raise even a
reasonable suspicion of spuriousness, if in other respects the account
will bear scrutiny. And certainly whether we regard the straightforwardness
of the narrative or the character of the incidents themselves,
the document commends itself Why should so insignificant a body as
the Church of Philomelium have been chosen as the recipient, unless
events had occurred which dictated the address Why should the
cowardice of a would-be martyr have been confessed, except that this
cowardice had actually been manifested
Why should the officers and
magistrates have been represented as showing so much consideration
for the prisoner
— the pohce allowing him several hours of respite
—
the irenarch taking him into his own chariot— even the proconsul
^
I have not thought it necessary to Galilean Onirches again are striking; but
discuss at length Keim's arguments found- they are equally well explained,
if the
ed on the literary plagiaris7iis which he Gallican brethren are the plagiarists,
discovers in this Letter of the Smyrnseans. The miraculous deliverance of Thekla
Beyond the scriptural obligations, these from death by burning is a widely difare
threefold— to the Ignatian Letters, to ferent incident from the phenomenon of
the Epistle of the Gallican Churches, and
the arching flame on the pyre of Polycarp,
to the Acts of Thekla. The obligations and probably quite independent. But, if
to the Ignatian Letters will hardly be there be a plagiarism on either side, it
questioned, but reasons have been given may safely be charged to the Acts of
for placing them some forty or fifty years Thekla, a known forgery of the later debefore
Polycarp's death (see above, p. 328
sq). The resemblances to the Letter of the
cades of the second century,