Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote:Clock is ticking - tick, tick, tick - and not a single example of the kind of 'textual reduction' through cutting chapter after chapter that the Syriac Ignatius texts would require. When you look at the actual examples that would need to be explained you see how silly this claim really is. For the most part what would need to be cut is that relentless adoration, even the cult of the bishop that permeates every aspect of these letters. Of course this is what is at the heart of the Greek Ignatius letters. So in order to believe this is authentic you have to accept that 'the real Ignatius' was being paraded around the Empire, going to his death in Rome at the hand of wild beasts, and all the while Ignatius is consciously portraying himself as a martyr for the authority of the bishop. 'I am dying,' he declares in almost every letter, 'so that you believe in the bishops across the Empire.' This is so patently stupid that only individuals brainwashed into the cult of ecclesiastical authority can't see this is secondary.

So, to be sure, the Syriac letters aren't polished. There are abrupt changes of topic. But then again he is a 'prisoner in chains' right? It's not like he's lying in bed thinking of what to say to the world. These are - at least theoretically - brief notes to communities as someone is passing through town on his way to his death.

If you look at the path towards ever increasing expansion the 'martyr for the ecclesiastical hierarchy' theme gets even more mind blowingly stupid.

Ignatius is made to ask Polycarp to organize a synod to select a bishop in Antioch. So what started as someone from 'the establishment' hijacking the letters of Ignatius, just to get people to accept the office of the bishop, ends up in the longest versions of the letters into an apology for the ecclesiastic bureaucracy!

RParvus wrote: Assuming the Syriac versions are abridgements, I am curious about what circumstances would account for their peculiarities. I am wondering if it is related to the circumstances of the most God-pleasing council. That is to say, while Christians were gathered in Antioch from various places to encourage the arrested hero, I expect they would have talked about the letters he had recently sent to their churches. If the letters were at times read out aloud at their gatherings it seems plausible that some might have tried to jot down parts of what they heard and found particularly inspiring. Those whose first language wasn’t Greek may have been trying to translate as they jotted. Perhaps the original core of the Syriac versions goes back to the jottings of one in attendance at the council.

Anyway, that is one scenario that occurs to me.

• Antioch of Pisidia;
  
  • This Antoch supposedly became one of the first Anatolian cities to accept Christianity
  • 2 Timothy 3 (NIV) -
    10 "You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, 11 persecutions, sufferings— what kinds of things happened to me Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra - the persecutions I endured"
    
    • Iconium & Lystra are in east Asia Minor/central Anatoloia, and that Antioch is likely to be, too.

• During the Hellenistic period Tarsus was known as 'Antiochia on the Cydnus' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsus,_Mersin#Etymology

• Epiphanius relates that Tatian established a school in Mesopotamia, the influence of which extended to Antioch in Syria, and 'was felt in Cilicia and especially in Pisidia'.

• Antiochia in Commagene on the upper Euphrates River ((Ancient Greek: Αντιόχεια τῆς Κομμαγηνῆς) which served as the capital for the Hellenistic kingdom of Commagene from c. 160 BC until it was surrendered to Rome in 72 and became known as Samosata.

John2 wrote:I've never given much attention to the Ignatian epistles before, but after following this discussion and scanning the literature I'd say it's looking good for the idea that the three Syriac versions found by Cureton are older than the longer versions in Greek. That Origen knows two of the Syriac versions and none of the Greek versions seems like good evidence for this. And as Besant writes:

"...all the quotations of the Fathers, without exception, up to the fourth century" are found in these Syriac letters.

But I see that Cureton regards these Syriac letters as translations from an earlier (now lost) Greek version.