Ignatius of Antioch in Second Century, Asia Minor

Allen Brent

In 1644 Archbishop Ussher published his great literary achievement—the recovery of the seven original letters purporting to have been written by Ignatius, a martyr and a bishop, dated by Eusebius in the reign of Trajan.1 Previously those letters had been a corpus of twelve, and the original seven had been expanded into the “Long Recension.” Notwithstanding Cureton’s abbreviated Syriac version, containing only three letters published in 1845, Ussher’s establishment of a corpus from the seven mentioned in Eusebius’ catalogue has remained almost universally unassailed amongst scholars.2 The issue of authenticity is however another matter. There is considerable contro- versy over the genuineness of these letters as the literary product of an actual martyr named Ignatius of Antioch. The issue is whether wholly or by interpola- tion they represent a fictional setting for a late second-century writer to justify a nascent episcopal order struggling to be reborn at that later date.3 I have long been convinced of the authenticity of the letters, whilst acknowledging the problems of contextualizing them historically and cultur- ally that have fed the charge that they are fictionalized forgeries. They claim to be the personal account of Ignatius travelling along the official route (cursus

1 Joseph B. Lightfoot, ed. and trans., The Apostolic Fathers: A Revised Text with Introductions, Notes, Dissertations, and Translations: Part 2: Ignatius and Polycarp, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1890), 1–9; and, Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch: A Martyr Bishop and the Origin of Episcopacy (New York: T&T Clark, 2007), 224–25. 2 A notable exception is Barthélemy H. R. Weijenborg, Les Lettres d’Ignace d’Antioche: Étude de critique littéraire et de théologie (Leiden: Brill, 1969). 3 Joseph Rius-Camps, The Four Authentic Letters of Ignatius the Martyr, OrChrAn 213 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientalium Studiorum, 1980); Robert Joly, Le dossier d’Ignace d’Antioche, ULB 69 (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1979); Reinhard M. Hübner, Der paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchiansimus im zweiten Jahrhundert: Mit einem Beitrag von Markus Vinzent, VCSup 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); and, Thomas Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochien, VCSup 47 (Leiden: Brill, 1999). But see Mark J. Edwards, “Ignatius and the Second Century: An Answer to R. Hubner,” ZAC 2 (1998): 214–26; and, Everett Ferguson, review of Thomas Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos? Chronologische und theologiegeschichtliche Studien zu den Briefen des Ignatius von Antiochien, CH 71 (2002): 169–70. See also Brent, Ignatius of Antioch, 95–143.

publicus) in chains as a condemned criminal, communicating by letter with three churches in Asia Minor (Magnesia, Tralles, Ephesus) and their clerical representatives that he could not visit due to his guards escorting him by the northern route through Asia Minor to Smyrna. Before leaving Smyrna, he sent a letter to the church of Rome in anticipation of his arrival for martyrdom in the arena.4 On reaching Troas, about to cross the Hellespont to Neapolis, he sent a letter to Philadelphia, through which he had passed on the northern route, without naming any bishop or other cleric as he had done with the churches that he had not visited except for Rome. From Troas too he wrote to Smyrna and also a personal letter to its bishop, Polycarp.5 One problem is that we have, in the background to the letters, a martyr’s journey from Antioch to Rome, and in his letter to the church at Rome he anticipates in quite lurid terms his death in the arena from wild beasts. But we have no independently surviving martyrology that is a credible, contem- porary witness.6 We have such a martyrology for Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, to whom Ignatius purportedly wrote a letter, but none for Ignatius confirm- ing his prediction about his personal fate. As a result and feeding off such a silence in arguably fragmented sources, the thesis has even been advanced that St. Ignatius was never a Christian martyr but converted to cynic philoso- phy as an adherent of which he committed suicide at Athens. Thus, he was the actual figure of Peregrinnus Proteus caricatured by Lucian. Whether however Ignatius-Peregrinnus was implausibly an actual figure or rather Lucian’s literary construction based on him, clearly his work and activity was far more at home in Lucian’s world than that of early Christian writers who do not men- tion him, or if so very circumspectly or, in Polycarp’s case, with a very impre- cise understanding. We have in that initially pagan and Hellenistic reception in Lucian a good indication of Ignatius’ true cultural background.7 Furthermore, there is a strange uniqueness to the letters themselves. As I have shown in detail elsewhere, Ignatius’ argument for the threefold order

4 Ign. Pol. 8; and, Phld. 11.2. 5 Ign. Rom. 10.1. 6 Étienne Decrept, “Circonstances et interprétations du voyage d’Ignace d’Antioche,” RevScRel 82 (2008): 389–99; and, Klaus-Gunther Essig, “Mutmassungen über den Anlass des Martyriums von Ignatius von Antiochien,” VC 40 (1986): 105–17. Cf. Brent, Ignatius of Antioch, 216–17. 7 Lechner makes much of this point in his argument for a later forgery. See Lechner, Ignatius adversus Valentinianos?, 68–117. See also in response, Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic, STAC 36 (Tübingen: Mohr, 2006): 18–30, 183–212.