(Begun in Notes of the date of 1828*, completed in* 1870.)
In my Essay on the theology of St. Ignatius (Essays, vol. i.), it was assumed that the controversy of the seventeenth century, in which Pearson bore so distinguished a part, had issued in a plain proof of the substantial genuineness of the text of the Medicean and Colbertine MSS. And it was inferred from this as a premiss, that apostolic Christianity was of a distinctly dogmatic character, it being impossible for those who resisted this inference to succeed in explaining away the text of Ignatius, as those MSS. contain it, and only open to them to take refuge in a denial of the premiss, that is, of the genuineness of that text. Then it was added as to such denial, “It is a curious speculation whether, in the progress of controversy, divines, who are determined at all risks not to admit the Church system, will not fall back upon it;—stranger things have happened.”
So I wrote in 1838, and what I then anticipated has actually taken place since, though not in the way that I anticipated. I did not fancy that the controversy would have been revived on grounds both new, and certainly at first sight plausible, as has been the case. Those new grounds do not change my own judgment on the matter in dispute; but they have a real claim to be taken into consideration. This I now propose to do.
1.
In the year 1845, then, the late Dr. Cureton gave to the world, from a Nitrian MS. of the seventh century, a Syriac version of three out of the seven Epistles enumerated by Eusebius, viz., those to St. Polycarp, to the Romans, and to the Ephesians; and in this ancient version various characteristic passages, as they are found in the Greek, are absent, and among them some of those on which I have insisted in my Essay. Dr. Cureton claims for this Syriac version (Preface, p. xi.) to be the nearest representative of “what Ignatius himself wrote;” and in this claim he is supported by various critics of great consideration. Nor are the reasons which he and they assign for their judgment of slight account, nor indeed do they admit of a summary refutation in our present partial knowledge of the facts of the case. Before it is possible to close the controversy thus reopened, the Syriac version of the remaining Epistles has to be discovered; or again, it should become clear that there never was any Syriac version of them at all; nor is anything yet known of the history of this new MS., of its derivation, or of the circumstances under which the version it contains was made, such as might explain what may be called the dumb fact of its existence.
One important exception to this remark must be mentioned; a second Nitrian MS. has also been discovered, containing one of the same three Epistles as are contained in the first, viz., the Epistle to Polycarp; and this MS. is of even an earlier date, viz., about A.D. 530-540, and with only so much difference of text from that of A.D. 600-700, as serves to show that the later MS. of the two was not copied from the earlier, and thereby to throw back the date of the version itself at least to the fifth century. The value, however, of this fact, in relation to the question before us, is not great, both because the Epistle to Polycarp anyhow contains little of a dogmatic character, and because, as regards this Epistle, the newly-discovered Syriac differs very little from the hitherto received Greek. Of course the coincidence of those MSS., two Syriac and one Greek, in one text, is a most satisfactory guarantee of the genuineness of that text; but it does not touch the difficulty, which lies in the important differences existing between the Syriac and Greek texts of the other two Epistles, to the Romans and to the Ephesians. In speaking of the agreement of the Syriac and Greek texts of the Epistle to Polycarp, I must not forget to mention that the two last chapters of the Greek are omitted in the Syriac; but these two chapters refer to what may be called personal matters, are of the nature of a postscript, and may have been really such, and thus may have been preserved in some copies, omitted in others, as the case might be, without prejudice to their genuineness. Yet the omission is not without its importance, as it shows that the Syriac copyist had no scruple in curtailing the text he was engaged upon.
Putting aside then the Epistle to St. Polycarp, we come to the real question; that is, what is the force and value of the suspicion cast on the Greek text of the Epistles to the Romans and to the Ephesians, so long received, at least in English schools, by the fact of the omission of important parts of them both in the Syriac MSS.; a suspicion directly attaching to those two, but indirectly of course affecting the other four also, from the probability that, were the Syriac of these four forthcoming (if Syriac there ever was), parallel omissions would occur in them also, as compared with their text as it stands in the received Greek. It must be added, that the very circumstance that only three Epistles have been found in Syriac, is with some critics a reason for thinking that three only were written by Ignatius, or at least only three preserved, though Eusebius speaks in his day of there being seven.