Eight of the fifteen epistles are universally
rejected as spurious (ante, p. 263). The longer Greek version of the
remaining seven epistles is almost unanimously condemned as grossly
interpolated; and the great majority of critics recognise that the
shorter Greek version is also much interpolated; whilst the Syriac
version, which, so far as MSS. are concerned, is by far the most ancient
text of any letters which we possess, reduces their number to three, and
their contents to a very small compass indeed. It is not surprising that
the vast majority of critics have expressed doubt more or less strong
regarding the authenticity of all these epistles, and that so large a
number have repudiated them altogether. One thing is quite
evident--that, amidst such a mass of falsification, interpolation, and
fraud, the Ignatian epistles cannot, in any form, be considered evidence
on any important point.... In fact, the whole of the Ignatian literature
is a mass of falsification and fraud" ("Sup. Rel.," vol. i., pp. 270,
271, 274). The student may judge from this confusion, of fifteen reduced
to seven long, and seven long reduced to seven short, and seven short
reduced to three, and those three very doubtful, how thoroughly reliable
must be Paley's arguments drawn from this "contemporary of Polycarp.
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