apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

LETTER OF THE SMYRNtEANS. 635
reckoned indifferently the ' ist, 2nd, 3rd, etc. after the Restoration,' or
the '51st, 52nd, 53rd, etc' absolutely. This practice was not uncommon.
Thus we read of the 517th commemoration of the quinquennial
Ephesian festival (Wood's Ephesus Inscr. vi. 8, 18, pp. 54,
68). If this solution be adopted, the 56th Olympiad, at which
Philip is designated High-priest of Asia, would coincide with a.d. 153.
But it will be shown, if I mistake not, that the office of High-priest
or Asiarch was held for four years (in. p. 412 sq) ; and, supposing
Philip to have been in office from a.d. 151 to 155, or from a.d. 152 to
156, his tenure would cover both the notices in the Trallian inscriptions
and the probable date of Polycarp's martyrdom. Moreover it is
also reconcilable with the Olympian inscription (no. i); for, though
the 232nd Olympiad began a.d. 149, the inscription does not say that
the monument was erected in the first year of the Olympiad. There
— are therefore the four years a.d. 149 153 to range over; and we are
thus brought well within the limits which on other grounds we have
assigned to Philip's tenure of office.
(4) The name of the procoisul is
given in this postscript
as Statins
Quadratus. In the narrative itself he is not named. But it will be
shown in the following chapter that Statius Quadratus held the Asiatic
proconsulate somewhere about the time when Philip the Trallian was in
office and when the martyrdom must have taken place.
Thus all the particulars affecting the date are confirmed in some way
or other ;
and the credibility of the paragraph has been established by
a mass of evidence gathered from various quarters and far exceeding
what we had any right to expect.
But an anachronism has been discovered in the words which follow.
It is
objected that the contrast between the temporal and the eternal
rulers— between the high-priesthood of Philip and proconsulate of
Quadratus on the one hand, and the kingdom of Christ on the otherindicates
a much later date than the middle of the second century;
that
such a formula is inipossible before a.d. 525, when Dionysius Exiguus
invented the mode of dating from the Christian era ;
and that it is still
rare even in the 9th century'.
1
Gorres Zeitschr. f. JViss. Thcol. XXI. finding the form in question not only in
P- 53 (1878), adopting the view of Bas- the Ldler of the Smyrncran: but also in
nage Annul. Pol. Eccl. 11. p. 362, who \.\\z Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs {Zeitschr.
condemns the ^cYj ^^/ax/w/w, etc., on /. Wiss. Theol. xxii. p. 97 sq, 1879;
this ground (see above, p. 503). Gorres Jahrb. f. Protest. Theol. 1884, p. 259).
inadvertently writes 'Dionysius Areopa- This objection is repeated by J. Reville
gita ' for Dionysius Exiguus. He has de Ann. Dieqtie Polyc. Mart. p. 30.
subsequently withdrawn this objection,