Forms of the Ignatian Letters.

This brings up the matter of the forms in which the Ignatian letters have come down to us. Eusebius speaks of seven letters (Church History iii. 36): Ephesians, Magnesians, Trallians, and Romans, written from Smyrna, and Philadelphians, Smyrnaeans, and Polycarp, written from Troas. In the manuscripts of Ignatius, however, the letters begin with Smyrnaeans and Polycarp, continuing with Ephesians, Magnesians, Philadelphias, Trallians; these are followed by a string of spurious letters that cannot be dated earlier than the latter part of the fourth century, among which Romans appears following a late and unhistorical account of the Martyrdom of Ignatius, to which it has evidently given rise. The order in which the genuine letters thus appear-Smyrnaeans, Polycarp, Ephesians, Magnesians, Philadelphians, Trallians, Romans — recalls Polycarp's words to the Philippians regarding what he was sending them: “We send you, as you asked, the letters of Ignatius which were sent to us by him [that would be Smyrnaeans and Polycarp] and such others as we had in our possession [that is, those to other Churches of which Burrhus would have retained copies].” This is perhaps the original order in which Polycarp circulated the collection, much as the Pauline letter collection had been put in circulation perhaps twenty-five years earlier. That Polycarp has that collection in the back of his mind is shown when he says to the Philippians, “Neither am I nor is any other like me able to follow the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul, who...when he was absent wrote letters to you” (3:2). The collection he is now sending them cannot compare with that of the Pauline letters; yet he also speaks of the endurance the Philippians had seen with their own eyes “not only in the blessed Ignatius and Zosimus and Rufus... but in Paul himself and in the other apostles” (9:1), thus suggesting that Ignatius, like Paul, is a martyr and so deserves a hearing.

Both Ignatius and Polycarp were well aware of the great value the collected letters of Paul had possessed for the churches; they speak of it (Eph. 12:2; Pol. Phil. 11:3) very much as though they had had that collection of the martyred Paul in mind in creating this new collection by the soon-to-be-martyred Ignatius. Ignatius' remark to the Ephesians that Paul “in every letter makes mention of [mnemoneuei] you” may point to Ephesus as the place where Paul's letters had been collected and published.

It is not necessary to suppose that Polycarp painfully sent around among the Asian churches and gathered up the letters of Ignatius. He tells the Philippians that he is sending them “the letters of Ignatius which were sent to us by him, and such others as we had in our possession.” How does Polycarp happen to have any others besides Ignatius' letters to himself and to his Church at Smyrna? He has already made a collection, it appears, before the Philippians ask him for it; indeed, Ignatius has told them to ask, for he understands what Polycarp has in mind. Apparently Burrhus, the deacon of Ephesus, who had accompanied Ignatius from Smyrna to Troas had kept copies of the letters he wrote for him for the use of his principals, Polycarp and Onesimus, and that Ignatius was aware of this and was agreeable to it. It is reasonable, then, to suppose that the letter to the Romans was among the letters Polycarp had in his possession and that he sent copies of it to the Philippians.

Two other forms of the Ignatian letters illustrate their popularity in ancient times. For they were not only generally accompanied by from six to ten spurious letters ascribed to Ignatius and written in his name, probably late in the fourth century, but each letter was interpolated and expanded, as Greek and Latin texts show. On the other hand, three of them — Polycarp, Ephesians, and Romans — are found in Syriac much abbreviated. The letters of Ignatius were, therefore, known in the early church in at least four different forms:

·        The seven genuine letters, known to Eusebius in A.D. 326.

·        These seven letters, accompanied by ten spurious ones.

·        The seven letters individually expanded and interpolated and accompanied by several spurious letters.

·        In Syriac three letters — Polycarp, Ephesians, Romans — compressed, on no particular principle, to a little more than half their original length.

Polycarp's “Letter to the Philippians” was not usually copied with the Ignatian letters; indeed, no complete Greek text of it is known, and although a group of Greek manuscripts preserves almost nine chapters of it, and Eusebius in his Church History (iii. 36. 14, 15) supplies the thirteenth, for the other four chapters we are dependent upon the Latin version.

Nearly sixty years later, in A.D. 167, Polycarp suffered martyrdom in Smyrna, at the age of eighty-six. An account of this, substantially historical, was embodied in a letter from the church of Smyrna to that of Philomelium, a town in Phrygia not far from Pisidian Antioch. It is the earliest example that has come down to us of that type of literature, the “martyrdom,” which was to become so abundant. It will be more fully discussed in its chronological position in the development of Christian letter literature.