Ignatz: Krazy Kat or Krazy editors?

[Secret Alias]

And for what it's worth this is my problem with these sorts of 'creative' theories. There should be an 'order of rank' when it comes to literary parallels. In this case the vulture coming out of the pyre which burns Peregrinus to death is IMO a clear retelling of the dove out of the pyre which killed Polycarp in his literary tradition. The fact that only Eusebius preserves this detail is hardly problematic. I don't see why we start anywhere other than this detail when trying to reconstruct who Peregrinus was. To me at least the bird out of the funeral pyre is a much, much stronger parallel than anything you, R Parvis have come up with to identify Peregrinus with Ignatius.

Of course I can see parallels between Peregrinus and Ignatius. That's not the point. The point is that if we are going to make the jump to identify Peregrinus as a known Christian we should start with Polycarp not Ignatius. Indeed the reason I stress this is that Polycarp eventually emerges as a secretary of the Ignatian corpus on YOUR preferred collection, the 'middle Greek' recension. I have to admit that Polycarp is referenced in the title of one of the short Syriac letters. To be sure. But I would argue that the original letters were from Polycarp the 'fiery one' and that gradually the two individuals became distinguished from one another by means the same kind of literary expansion that developed the middle and longest recensions of the Greek Ignatian collections.

The fact that Irenaeus doesn't name Polycarp throughout much of Adv Haer and indeed never identifies Ignatius by name (when citing from Romans) is another clue. I don't mean to get too deeply afield of the original topic in this thread - DCH's work on the Ignatian corpus, but if we are going to play 'let's identify Peregrinus as a Christian' Polycarp is a much stronger match than anything in the Ignatian corpus.

[DCHindley]

David,

If “Ignatius” was indeed Peregrinus, I would not expect to find much Cynic philosophy in the Ignatian letters. Lucian seems to locate Peregrinus’ initiation into Cynicism after his exit from Christianity. Right after saying that Peregrinus was kicked out by the Christians Lucian writes this:

“Thereafter he went away a third time, to Egypt, to visit Agathobulus,17 where he took that wonderful course of training in asceticism, shaving one half of his head, daubing his face with mud, and demonstrating what they call 'indifference' by erecting his yard amid a thronging mob of bystanders,18 besides giving and, taking blows on the back-sides with a stalk of fennel, and playing the mountebank even more audaciously in many other ways.” (A.M. Harmon’s translation of “The Death of Peregrinus,” my bolding)

Haven't heard the phrase "erecting his yard" since the debates over whether Jesus was a Cynic-like sage.

You are right, he didn't formally embrace Cynicism until well after the period he might have authored the Ignatian letters (if he did at all).

Being the son of a wealthy family, though, he should have received at least a basic education, but I cannot see any signs of education in the words of Ignatius. He seems so ... um ... simple, in an attention seeking sort of way. That is why I had earlier suggested that he was like one of the desert monks of a slightly later period, the letters being pseudepigraphical, projected back in time.

If not that, then it's almost like he was "acting out". We see that nowadays in some children of wealthy families. They reject everything that was important to their parents (especially fathers), as a way to get their attention. Bad attention is better than no attention, I suppose.

Funny, though, that one reconstruction of his life that is online makes him out to be an "Ebionite", possibly because the sin that got him expelled from the Christian communities was eating forbidden meat, as Ebionites were said to be vegetarians.

Yet, weren't Marcionites vegetarians as well? I have no idea if Apellians retained that practice. Besides, his general attitude towards Jews (I prefer the word "Judeans" regardless of where they happen to live) does not suggest "Ebionite" to me.

Of course, the order of these events may have been a bit different in reality than as told by Lucian, who gives the most complete, although wholly hostile, account of his life.

DCH

[DCHindley]

I need to know more about "Apellian" teaching ...

I collected a lot of ancient quotations about his views here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2130#p47543.

Thanks for that. I've copied them but have yet to try to give them a close read.

DCH

[MrMacSon]

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Acording to wikipedia, Lucian "wrote solely in Greek, mainly Attic Greek (he was [self-described as] ethnically Assyrian). Lucian claimed to be a native speaker of a "barbarian tongue" (Double Indictment, 27) which was most likely Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic."

He wrote in a variety of styles which included comic dialogues, rhetorical essays and prose fiction.

Lucian was also one of the earliest novelists in Western civilization. In True Stories, a fictional narrative work written in prose, he parodies some of the fantastic tales told by Homer in the Odyssey and also the not so fantastic tales from the historian Thucydides. He anticipated "modern" fictional themes like voyages to the moon and Venus, extraterrestrial life and wars between planets, nearly two millennia before Jules Verne and HG Wells. His novel is widely regarded as an early, if not the earliest science fiction work.

[Ulan]

Here's a fixed link: True History.

I find his judgment of Herodot intersting: "They [the travelers in the book] find Herodotus being eternally punished for the "lies" he published in his Histories."

[MrMacSon]

Here's a fixed link: True History.

I find his judgment of Herodot interesting: "They [the travelers in the book] find Herodotus being eternally punished for the "lies" he published in his Histories."

Cheers. I changed my url-link too - to the one you provided.

I also found this interesting -

• Lucian "justifies the title [True Stories or True fictions; Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα, Alēthē diēgēmata] by arguing that his is the only truthful mythological story ever written, inasmuch as it is the only one that admits that it is all lies. He also promises a sequel but it is not known if such a sequel exists."
  
  True History

[DCHindley]

.
"He justifies the title by arguing that his is the only truthful mythological story ever written, inasmuch as it is the only one that admits that it is all lies. He also promises a sequel but it is not known if such a sequel exists."

Are you referring to Lucian or Parvus?

DCH

[MrMacSon]

lol; Lucian - I edited my previous post to clearify (sic; & I'm not Sth African)

[DCHindley]

Roger,

My apologies.

I just finished the book. The part about the correspondence between Peregrinus and Ignatius resonates much better with me than the part about the Appelian origin of the Gospel of John.

Kept getting this sense of deja vu when reading it, then I realized I had downloaded your book in 2011 and then subsequently deleted it.

At the time I simply found it too speculative to deserve close scrutiny. That was before I had subjected the shorter & longer Greek forms of the Ignatian letters to my feeble attempt at "analysis".

At the moment, my teeth are giving me issues and I am in a fair amount of pain that will not be addressed until July when my dental plan starts a new fiscal year. It is hard for me to concentrate but I will try.

You mention a lot of little peculiarities I also had noticed in Ignatius, Gospel of John, the letters to the seven churches in the first three chapters of the Apocalypse, the Clementine Homilies, etc. I am not sure I agree with how you tie them all together to Apelles, or as accommodations or refutations to the teachings of the mystery man, at least not in some cases.

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

I just finished the book. The part about the correspondence between Peregrinus and Ignatius resonates much better with me than the part about the Appelian origin of the Gospel of John.

Do you have a better reading of the gospel of John? I found his arguments very interesting, and DeConick's, as well. But I am always up for trying to see that gospel through fresh eyes. So many mysteries there.