Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (132 page)

In sum, while a good deal remains ambiguous, several points seem clear. In view of linguistic considerations, the author of the Pseudo-Ignatians appears
to be Julian of Antioch, who also produced the Apostolic Constitutions and the Commentary on Job. In the latter he takes a strong neo-Arian stand. In the Pseudo-Ignatians, for one reason or another (written for a different purpose? At a different time in his life, when his views were somewhat altered?) the line he takes is somewhat more moderate, comparable to a traditional Eusebian dyohypostatic perspective. But there is little doubt about his principal theological opponent—whether a real figure or a person or group imagined for the occasion. He attacks in particular an extreme Nicene perspective that emphasized the unity of God, the one hypostasis, at the expense, in the author’s opinion, of the individual existence of Christ and his subordination to the Father.

Throughout this study I have stressed that forgeries—like other literary works—need to be seen as multifunctional, and this is certainly the case with the Pseudo-Ignatians. The author was not concerned simply to attack false theological teachings. He had a wide range of interests, as is evident from even a casual perusal of his work. Among other things he devoted a considerable amount of effort to expanding the paranetic sections of the authentic Ignatian letters (see e.g., Philad. 4) and in providing paranesis of his own (e.g., Antioch. 9–10). In that regard he was interested in the social arrangements of the Christians in their family lives (the Haustafeln in the chapters just mentioned); in ethical instructions against crimes such as magic, pederasty, and murder (Antioch. 11); and against fanatically rigorous asceticism (Hero 1). He was particularly concerned to develop Ignatius’ own stress on the church hierarchy (e.g., Eph. 5). The bishop is to be followed as the head of the church (Hero 3, Tars. 8, Trall. 7, Smyrn. 9, and lots of other places). The author was especially keen to stress—in an elaboration on a theme of the Pastoral epistles, as N. Brox has recognized
⁷⁴
—the validity of young bishops (Magn. 3 and both letters in the correspondence with Mary).

In addition, he had other polemical targets, not just the dubious theologians he saw as the primary threat. In particular, he was concerned with Jews and/or Judaizers who, in this case, were not necessarily ciphers for his overly emphatic miahypostatic opponents.
⁷⁵
And so, he explicitly attacks the “Christ killing Jews” (Magn. 11; Philad. 6) and indicates that Jews both do battle with God and “killed the Lord” (Trall. 11). Christ stands over against “the Jews,” his enemies: “The Word raised up again His own temple on the third day, when it had been destroyed by the Jews fighting against Christ.” For him, Judaism no longer served a useful (or any) function, and had legitimately passed away: “It is absurd to speak
of Jesus Christ with the tongue, and to cherish in the mind a Judaism which has now come to an end” (Magn. 10). For that reason, Jewish festivals were no longer to be kept: “Let us therefore no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness” (Magn. 9). In fact, anyone who keeps Sabbath “is a Christ killer” (Philip. 13); so too is anyone who celebrates the Passover with the Jews. This final attack may be directed against Quartodecimans; but given the propensity of some Christians in some places to celebrate Jewish holidays with Jews—famously acknowledged and attacked by other stalwart fourth-century proponents of Christian orthodoxy such as John Chrysostom
⁷⁶
—the author may indeed have in mind otherwise orthodox Christians celebrating real festivals with real Jewish friends and neighbors.

1
. See pp. 362–66.

2
. F. C. Burkitt,
Early Eastern Christianity
(London: John Murray, 1904),
ch. 1
.

3
. Walter Bauer,
Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity
,
ch. 1
.

4
. Judah Segal,
Edessa, the “Blessed City
” pp. 68–69.

5
. See e.g., J. J. Gunther, “The Meaning and Origin of the Name, ‘Judas Thomas,’”
Mus
93 (1980): 113–48. On the whole question, see Sebastian Brock, “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity,” in Attridge and Hata, eds.,
Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism
, pp. 212–34; and Alexander Mirkovic,
Prelude to Constantine
. Mirkovic’s concern, however, is not with the origin of the legend but with its function in the early centuries of circulation.

6
. Most thoroughly in H. J. W. Drijvers, “Addai und Mani: Christentum und Manichäismus im dritten Jahrhundert in Syrien,”
OrChrAn
221 (1983): 171–85; recapitulated in “The Abgar Legend,” in Schneemelcher,
New Testament Apocrypha
, 1.492–99. See also “Facts and Problems in Early Syriac Speaking Christianity,”
SecCent
2 (1982): 157–75.

7
. “Die Abgar-Sage ist wahrscheinlich am Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts in Edessa entstanden als eine Propagandaschrift der damaligen Orthodoxie”; “Addai und Mani,” p. 172.

8
. See pp. 364–66.

9
. Translation from Ehrman and Pleše,
Apocryphal Gospels
. In the later
Doctrina Addai
, Jesus’ reply is delivered orally rather than in writing. It is usually thought that this is a change from the older version of the story, influenced by the view that Jesus was known not to have written anything (so Augustine,
Contra Faust
. 28.4; Jerome,
In Ezek
. 44. 29; Gelasian Decree 5.8.1.2).

10
. Quotation from M. 556, I, ed. F. W. K. Muller,
APAW
(1904): 87, as cited by Drijvers, “Facts and Problems,” p. 163, n. 24.

11
. “Es stellt sich also heraus, dass der Antwortbrief Jesu an Abgar eine pointierte Version des Para-kletspruches ist, die vielleicht gegen den manichäischen Ansprüchen und der manichäischen Mission gemeint ist”; “Addai und Mani,” p. 180.

12
. Drijvers also suggests that the allusion to John 20:29 at the outset may have been picked up from the Manichaean literature, as the Manichaeans may have used it to explain why the eyewitnesses got it wrong and only the later Mani got it right; “Addai und Mani,” p. 181.

13
. Ibid., p. 181.

14
. Drijvers’ view that it was the last line of the letter (“your city will be blessed and the enemy will no longer prevail over it”) that led to a separate transmission history of the letters, apart from the stories, fails to convince. Why would the line not, then, be found in Eusebius, if he knew both the letters and the legend? It is easier to believe that the correspondence originally had a transmission history of its own and that the final line was added in some witnesses but not others.

15
. “Abgar Legend,” p. 495. Emphasis his.

16
. “Facts and Problems,” p. 161.

17
. Interestingly, in the Manichaean legend, Mani’s “heavenly twin clothes him with miraculous healing power and charges him to proclaim the message of the truth.” This is, in the Addai Legend, “exactly the same task for which Judas Thomas sends Addai to Edessa.” It is, then, a later feature of the legend, as the letters originally indicated that it would be Jesus who sent an apostle, not his twin. Moreover, in the
Doctrina Addai
, the portrait of Jesus painted by Hanan appears to stand in the place of the venerated portrait of Mani. “Facts and Problems,” p. 165–66.

18
. “The Abgar Legend,” p. 496.

19
. On the problem presented now by the term
Arian
, see below, pp. 474–75.

20
. Charles Bigg, “The Clementine Homilies,” in
Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica: Essays Chiefly in Biblical and Patristic Criticism
, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), p. 192.

21
.
Knowledge and Religious Authority in the Pseudo-Clementines
(Tübingen: Mohr/Siebeck, 2006), p. 15.

22
. Prologue to the
Recognitions
; translation of Thomas Smith in
ANF
, vol. 8.

23
.
Knowledge and Religious Authority
, p. 28.

24
. Ibid., pp. 206–7.

25
. See the fascinating historical survey of J. B. Lightfoot,
The Apostolic Fathers: Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp
(London: Macmillan, 1889–90, reprinted Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1989);
part 2
, vol. 1,
Ignatius and Polycarp
; pp. 237–46.

26
.
Apostolic Fathers
, p. 235.

27
. Quoted in ibid., p. 237.

28
. For the following two paragraphs I depend on my discussion in
The Apostolic Fathers
, 1. 210–11.

29
.
Polycarpi et Ignatii epistolae
(Oxford: Lichfield, 1644).

30
.
Epistolae genuinae S. Ignatii martyris
(Amsterdam: Blaev, 1646).

31
.
Acta primorum martyrum sincere et selecta
(Paris: Muget, 1689).

32
. William Cureton,
The Ancient Syriac Version of Saint Ignatius
(London: Rivington, 1845).

33
. Lightfoot,
Apostolic Fathers
. Theodore Zahn,
Ignatius von Antiochien
(Gotha: Perthes, 1873).

34
. Weijenborg,
Les lettres d'Ignace
; Joly,
Dossier;
Rius-Camps,
The Four Authentic Letters;
Hübner, “Thesen zur Echtheit und Datierung”; Thomas Lechner,
Ignatius adversus Valentinianos
.

35
. See further p. 6, n. 7.

36
. Lightfoot, p. 248; much of Zahn’s argument is recapitulated in Arnold Amelungk, “Untersuchung über Pseudo-Ignatius,”
ZWT
42 (1899): 508–81.

37
. “eigentlich ein Plagiat von dem [Brief] an Polycarp.” Amelungk, “Untersuchung,” p. 553.

38
. Jack W. Hannah, “The Setting of the Ignatian Long Recension,”
JBL
79 (1960): 222.

39
. Milton P. Brown, “Notes on the Language and Style of Pseudo-Ignatius,”
JBL
83 (1964): 146–52.

40
. Translations are taken from A. Cleveland Coxe in
ANF
.

41
. Lightfoot,
Apostolic Fathers
, p. 258.

42
. See, for example, A. Harnack,
Die Lehre der zwölf Apostel
, pp. 241–68; and C. H. Turner, “Notes on the Apostolic Constitutions I–III,”
JTS
16 (1914–15): 54–61, 523–38; 31 (1930): 128–41.

43
. Dieter Hagedorn,
Der Hiobkommentar
.

44
. “Un commentaire grec arien sur Job,”
RHE
20 (1924): 38–65.

45
. For early views, and an explicit discussion and refutation of Funk’s claim that the author was Apollinarian, see Amelungk, “Untersuchungen.” For Eusebius of Emesa: Othmar Perler, “Pseudo-Ignatius und Eusebius von Emesa,”
Historisches Jahrbuch
77 (1958), 73–82; Evagrius Ponticus (completely un-convincingly): Reinoud Weijenborg,” Is Evagrius Ponticus the Author of the Longer Recension of the Ignatian Letters?”
Anton
44 (1969): 339–47; Euzoius or associate: James D. Smith, III, “Reflections on Euzoius in Alexandria and Antioch,”
StPatr
36 (2001): 514–20.

46
.
Hiobkommentar
, xli.

47
. On the problems involved with using the term
Arian
, see esp. Lewis Ayres,
Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Thinking
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 2–4, 13–14. See further pp. 474–75 below.

48
.
Hiobkommentar
, xlii–xlviii.

49
. Ibid., xlix.

50
. “Die einzige mögliche Erklärung für die sachlichen und sprachlich-stilistischen Parallelen zwischen allen drei Werken ist die Identität ihres Autors.” Ibid., lii.

51
. Translation mine, based on the Greek text in Hagedorn,
Hiobkommentar
, pp. 245–46.

52
. His argument: Julian uses the Lucianic revision of the Septuagint, he cites the exegesis of Lucian of Antioch, he discusses alternative interpretations of “the Syrians,” and Antioch was a stronghold of Arianism.

53
. See, e.g., Joseph Lienhard,
Contra Marcellum: Marcellus of Ancyra and Fourth-Century Theology
(Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 1999), ch. 4.

54
. This is why it is important to look at a range of issues, not simply theological content, when evaluating the authorial claims of such works as the Pastoral epistles or Colossians and Ephesians.

55
. On the problems of using terms connected with “Arian,” see pp. 474–75.

56
. See, e.g., Lienhard,
Contra Marcellum
, pp. 210–40.

57
. See, for example, Norbert Brox, “Pseudo-Paulus und Pseudo-Ignatius: einige Topoi altchristlicher Pseudepigraphie,”
VC
30 (1976): 181–88, who deals with a very limited aspect of the problem posed by the Pseudo-Ignatians, arguing that the author modeled his work on Pastorals, especially (though somewhat obviously) in his correspondence with Mary.

58
. All quotations of the long recension of Ignatius are taken from Roberts and Donaldson, eds.,
ANF
, vol. 1.

59
. This was obviously a key passage for Funk’s identification of the author as an Apollinarian; see, though, note 65 below.

60
.
Arius: Heresy and Tradition
, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 166. See also note 47 above.

61
. See especially Lienhard,
Marcellus
, p. 108.

62
. Ibid., p. 194. It is interesting to consider the First Creed of the Dedication at the Council of Antioch, whose “Arian” bishops rejected the label Arian: “We have not been followers of Arius. For how could we, as bishops, follow a presbyter? Nor did we receive any other faith except the one handed down from the beginning. We ourselves were the examiners and testers of his [Arius’s] faith. We admitted him; we did not follow him.” Quoted in ibid., p. 168.