As for "the writers who have specially discussed the Ignatian question
during the last quarter of a century": Cureton apparently did not
think it worth while to add anything regarding the Armenian version of
Petermann
{xlvi}
after its appearance; Bunsen refutes Petermann's arguments in a few
pages of his "Hippolytus";(1) Baur, who wrote against Bunsen and the
Curetonian letters, and, according to Dr. Lightfoot's representation,
should have found this "the most formidable argument" against them,
does not anywhere, subsequent to their publication, even allude to the
Armenian Epistles; Ewald, in a note of a couple of lines,(2) refers to
Petermann's Epistles as identical with a post-Eusebian manipulated form
of the Epistles which he mentions in a sentence in his text; Dressel
devotes a few unfavourable lines to them;(3) Hefele(4) supports them at
somewhat greater length; but Bleek, Volkmar, Tischendorf, Bohringer,
Scholten, and others have not thought them worthy of special notice, at
any rate none of these nor any other writers of any weight have, so far
as I am aware, introduced them into the controversy at all.
The argument itself did not seem to me of sufficient importance to
introduce into a discussion already too long and complicated, and I
refer the reader to Bunsen's reply to it, from which, however, I may
quote the following lines:
"But it appears to me scarcely serious to say: there are the Seven
Letters in Armenian, and I maintain, they prove that Coreton's text is
an incomplete extract, because, I think, I have found some Syriac idioms
in the Armenian text! Well, if that is not a joke, it simply proves,
according to ordinary logic, that the Seven Letters must have once been
translated into Syriac. But how can it prove that the Greek original of
{xlvii}
this supposed Syriac version is the genuine text, and not an
interpolated and partially forged one?" (l)
Dr. Lightfoot blames me for omitting to introduce this argument, on
the ground that "a discussion which, while assuming the priority of the
Curetonian letters, ignores this version altogether, has omitted a vital
problem of which it was bound to give an account" Now all this is
sheer misrepresentation. I do not assume the priority of the Curetonian
Epistles, and I examine all the passages contained in the seven Greek
Epistles which have any bearing upon our Gospels.
Passing on to another point, I say:
"Seven Epistles have been selected out of fifteen extant, all equally
purporting to be by Ignatius, simply because only that number were
mentioned by Eusebius."(2)
Another passage is also quoted by Dr. Lightfoot, which will be found
a little further on, where it is taken for facility of reference. Upon
this he writes as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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