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Updated: June 28, 2025
Lightfoot produced to show that "the episcopate was widely spread in Asia Minor and in Syria" in "the early years of the second century"? If the Ignatian Epistles be discredited, he has none at all. But there is very decisive evidence to the contrary. The Teaching of the Apostles, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Polycarp prove the very reverse. And yet Dr.
This Epistle stands in the second line of the evidence, and as a witness is rather confirmatory than principal. After Dr. Lightfoot's masterly exposition there is probably nothing more to be said about the genuineness, date, and origin of the Ignatian Epistles. Dr.
Cureton here expressed himself with due caution, his language is certainly not calculated to reassure the advocates of the Ignatian Epistles. One of their most learned editors in recent times so far from speaking in a tone of confidence respecting them here admits that he attached to them "no very great importance."
Whilst he disliked its style, he felt that it wanted other marks of genuineness. When writing The Ancient Church now nearly thirty years ago I was disposed to think that the Ignatian Epistles had been manufactured at Antioch; but more mature consideration has led me to adopt the conclusion that they were concocted at Rome.
If Bentley denounced the whole as a forgery, it seems to follow, by logical inference, that he would have pronounced the same verdict on the half or the third part. Dr. Cureton is mistaken when he affirms in the preceding communication that his Syriac version has rejected "all the passages" against which "the critics of the Ignatian controversy" had protested.
Polycarp was eighty-six years of age at the time of his death; and it follows that in A.D. 107, or sixty-two years before, when the Ignatian letters are alleged to have been dictated, he was only four-and-twenty.
If we adopt the reading to be found in the Latin version, and which, from internal evidence, we may judge to be a true rendering of the original, we are, according to the interpretation which must be given to it by the advocates of the Ignatian Epistles, involved in hopeless bewilderment.
Can you explain how it happens that the Syriac text, found in the very language of Ignatius himself, and transcribed many hundreds of years before the Ignatian controversy was thought of, now it is discovered, should contain only the three Epistles of the existence of which there is any historical evidence before the time of Eusebius, and that, although it may contain some things which you do not approve, still has rejected all the passages which the critics of the Ignatian controversy protested against?
The height to which the single bishop of authority in a church had been exalted is well illustrated in the Ignatian Epistles. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch and was condemned by the emperor Trajan to suffer death by being thrown to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre in Rome. His execution in this manner took place Dec. 20, A.D. 107.
It has been deemed right to subjoin here a copy of the Ignatian Epistle to the Romans, as some readers may not have it at hand for consultation. Various translations of this Epistle have been published. The following adheres pretty closely to that given by the Bishop of Durham:
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