Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz
from one another in extent, number and character. There is a shorter Greek recension containing seven, a larger Greek form, with expansions introduced for a purpose, containing thirteen epistles, twelve by and one to Ignatius, and the shortest of all in a Syriac translation containing three epistles, those to the Romans, to the Ephesians, and to Polycarp.61 According to the first-named recension, Ignatius is represented as writing all his epistles during his martyr journey to Rome, but no reference to this is made in the Syrian recension. Vigorous polemic against Judaistic and Docetic heresy, undaunted confession of the divinity of Christ, and unwearied exhortation to recognise the bishop as the representative of Christ, while the presbyters are described as the successors of the Apostles, distinguish these epistles from all other writings of this age, especially in the two Greek recensions, and have led many critics to question their genuineness. Bunsen, Lipsius, Ritschl, etc., regarded the Syrian recension, in which the hierarchical tendency was more in the background, as the original and authentic form. Uhlhorn, Düsterdieck, Zahn, Funk, Lightfoot, Harnack, etc., prefer the shorter Greek recension, and view the Syrian form as abbreviated perhaps for liturgical purposes, Baur, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, etc., deny the genuineness of all three. But even on this assumption, in determining the date of the composition of the two shorter recensions, to whichever of them we may ascribe priority and originality, we cannot on internal grounds put them later than the middle of the second century, whereas the larger Greek recension paraphrased and expanded into thirteen epistles belongs certainly to a much later date (§ 43, 4).62
§ 30.6.
1 Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, had also been according to Irenæus ordained to this office by the Apostle John. He died at the stake under Marcus Aurelius (Antoninus Pius?) in A.D. 166 (or A.D. 155) at an extreme old age (§ 22, 3). We possess an epistle of his to the Philippians of practical contents important on account of its New Testament quotations. Its genuineness, however, has been contested by modern criticism. It stands and falls with the seven Ignatian epistles, as it occupies common ground with them. We have a legendary biography of Polycarp by Pionius dating from the 4th century, which is reproduced in Lightfoot’s work.
2 Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis in Galatia, was also, according to Irenæus, a pupil of the Apostle John. This statement, however, in the opinion of Eusebius and many moderns, rests upon a confusion between the Apostle and another John, whom Papias himself distinguishes by the title πρεσβύτερος (§ 16, 2). He is said to have suffered death as a martyr under Marcus Aurelius, about A.D. 163. With great diligence he collected mediately and immediately from the mouths of the πρεσβύτεροι, that is, from such as had intercourse with the Apostles, or had been, like the above-mentioned John the Presbyter, μαθηταὶ τοῦ κυρίου, oral traditions about the discourses of the Lord, and set down the results of his inquiries in a writing entitled Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις. A passage quoted by Eusebius in his Ch. Hist., iii. 29, from the preface of this treatise has given rise to a lively controversy as to whether Papias was a pupil of the Apostle John and was acquainted with the fourth Gospel. Another fragment on the history of the origin of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark has occasioned a dispute as to whether only these two Gospels were known to him. Finally, there is preserved in Irenæus a passage giving a reputed saying of Christ regarding the fantastically rich fruitfulness of the earth during the thousand years’ reign (§ 33, 9). He so revels in fantastic and sensuous chiliastic dreams that Eusebius, who had previously spoken of him as a learned and well-read man, is driven to pass upon him the harsh judgment: σφόδρα γάρ τοι σμικρὸς ὢν τὸν νοῦν.63
3 Finally, we must here include an epistle to a certain Diognetus by an unknown writer, who has described himself as μαθητὴς τῶν ἀποστόλων. Justin Martyr, among whose writings this epistle got inserted, cannot possibly have been the author, as both his style and his point of view are different. The epistle controverts in a spirited manner the objections of Diognetus to Christianity, views the pagan deities not, like the other Church Fathers, as demons, but as unsubstantial phantoms, explains the Old Testament institutions as human, and so in part foolish enactments, and maintains keenly and determinedly the opinion that God for the first time revealed Himself to man in Christ. He thus, as Dräseke thinks, to some extent favours the Marcionite view of the Old Testament, so that he regards it as not improbable that our epistle was composed by a disciple of Marcion, one perhaps like Apelles, who in the course of the later development of the school had rejected many of his master’s crudities (§ 27, 12). He addresses his discourse to Diognetus, the stoical philosopher who boasts of Marcus Aurelius as his master. On the other hand, Overbeck assigns its composition to the Post-Constantine Age, and the French scholar Doulcet, setting it down to the age of Hadrian, thinks he has discovered the author to be the Athenian philosopher Aristides. This idea has been more fully carried out by Kihn, who endeavours to make out not only the identity of the author, but that of him to whom the epistle is addressed: Κράτιστε Διόγνητε, “Almighty son of Zeus,” that is, Hadrian.
§ 30.7. The Didache or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.—The celebrated little treatise bearing the title Διδαχὴ κυρίου διὰ τῶν δώδεκα ἀποστόλων τοῖς ἔθνεσιν was discovered by Bryennius (then metropolitan of Serrä, now of Nicomedia) in the Jerusalem Codex, to which we also owe the perfect text of the two so-called Epistles of Clement, and it was edited by this scholar with prolegomena and notes in Greek, at Constantinople in 1883. It at once set in motion many learned pens in Germany, France, Holland, England, and North America.—Eusebius, who first expressly names it in his list of New Testament writings as τῶν ἀποστόλων αἱ λεγόμεναι διδαχαί, which Rufinus renders by Doctrina quæ dicitur App., places it in the closest connection with the Epistle of Barnabas among the ἀντιλεγόμενα νόθα (§ 36, 8). Four years later Athanasius ranks it as διδαχὴ καλουμένη τῶν ἀπ. along with the Shepherd of Hermas, giving it the first place, as a New Testament supplement corresponding to the Old Testament ἀναγινωσκόμενα (§ 59, 1). Clement of Alexandria quoting a passage from it uses the formula, ὑπὸ τῆς γραφῆς εἴρηται, and thus treats it as holy scripture. In Origen again no sort of reference to it has as yet been found. From the 39th Festival Epistle of Athanasius, A.D. 367, which ranks it, as we have just seen, as a New Testament supplement like the Old Testament Anaginoskomena, we know that it like these were used at Alexandria παρὰ τῶν πατέρων in the instruction of catechumens. In the East, according to Rufinus, when enumerating in his Expos. Symb. Ap. the Athanasian Anaginoskomena, we find alongside of Hermas, instead of the Didache, the “Two Ways,” Duæ viæ vel Judicium secundum Petrum. Jerome, too, in his De vir. ill., mentions among the pseudo-Petrine writings a Judicium Petri. We have here no doubt a Latin translation or recension of the first six chapters of the Didache beginning with the words: Ὅδοι δύο εἰσι, these two ways being the way of life and the way of death. The second title instead of the twelve Apostles names their spokesman Peter as the reputed author of the treatise. Soon after the time of Athanasius our tract passed out of the view of the Church Fathers, but it reappears in the Ecclesiastical Constitutions of the 4th century (§ 43, 4, 5), of which it formed the root and stem. The Didache itself, however, should not be ranked among the pseudepigraphs, for it never claims to have been written by the twelve Apostles or by their spokesman Peter.—Bryennius and others, from the intentional prominence given to the twelve Apostles in the title and from the legalistic moralizing spirit that pervades the book, felt themselves justified in seeking its origin in Jewish-Christian circles. But this moralizing character it shares with the other Gentile-Christian writings of the Post-Apostolic Age (§ 30, 2), and the restriction of the term “Apostles” by the word “twelve” was occasioned by this, that the itinerant preachers of the gospel of that time, who in the New Testament are called Evangelists (§ 17, 5) were now called Apostles as continuators of the Apostles’ missionary labours, and also the exclusion of the Apostle Paul is to be explained by the consideration that the book is founded upon the sayings of the Lord, the tradition of which has come to us only through the twelve. It has been rightly maintained