From Helmut Koester’s
Introduction to the New Testament: History and Literature of Early Christianity (pp. 57-59):
(f) The Letters of Ignatius of Antioch
The story of the transmission and revision of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch is a striking example of the possible fate of ancient documents that are not protected by canonical status. It is known from a letter of bishop Polycarp of Smyrna to the church of Philippi, written some time in the first half of the 2d century, that he sent copies of a collection of the letters of Ignatius to Philippi (Polycarp,
Phil. 13; see §12.2h). Eusebius of Caesarea reports in his
Church History (3.36.2-11) that Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch, was transported to Rome for martyrdom, that he visited churches in Asia, and that he wrote letters to the churches of Ephesus, Magnesia on the Maeander, Tralles, Rome, Philadelphia, Smyrna, and to Polycarp—a total of seven letters.
The extant manuscripts and translations of Ignatius’s letters, however, which circulated in the Middle Ages, contained thirteen letters in their Greek version and twelve letters in their Latin version. In addition to the letters mentioned by Eusebius they present a letter to Ignatius from a certain Maria of Cassobola (missing in the Latin version), a letter of Ignatius to her, letters to the churches of Tarsus, Philippi, and Antioch, and a letter to the deacon Hero of Antioch. This collection of the Ignatian epistles, known as the “Longer Recension,” was first printed in the 16th century, but its authenticity had already been questioned in the Renaissance period. A later version of this recension appears in some Latin medieval manuscripts that contain additional letters of Ignatius to the apostle John, to Mary mother of Jesus, and a letter of Mary to Ignatius. A different edition of Ignatius’s letters, was also known in the Middle Ages, when it was translated into Latin, English, and Armenian. In Greek, however, this edition is preserved only in one single manuscript, the
Codex Mediceo Laurentianus of Florence, written in the 11th century. It also presents the letters of the “Longer Recension” but it differs from it insofar as six of the seven letters mentioned by Eusebius (the letter to the Romans is missing) appear in a shorter form; it has therefore been called the “Middle Recension.” Also the letter to the Romans is preserved in a shorter form in a Greek manuscript of the martyrdom of Ignatius, called the Martyrium Colbertinum (of which also Latin and Syriac versions exist). This “Middle Recension” of the Ignatian letters was rediscovered in the 17th century, was reprinted several times, and in the course of time, it generally became accepted that the letters of this recension that had been mentioned by Eusebius were the original letters of Ignatius. In the year 1845, however, the English scholar Cureton published still another recension, preserved in a Syriac translation and containing only three letters in a still shorter form, namely, letters to the Ephesians, to the Romans, and to Polycarp. Some scholars subsequently accepted only these three letters in their short form as authentic Ignatian letters.
The various collections and recensions of Ignatius’s letters thus present a total of fourteen letters of Ignatius and two letters of Ignatius. The seven letters mentioned by Eusebius are transmitted in a shorter and a longer version, and three of them in an even shorter recension. The studies of Theodor Zahn and J.B. Lightfoot at the end of the 19th century were able to argue convincingly, that the six letters of the Middle Recension and the letter of the Romans in the form in which it appears in the
Martyrium Colbertinum—that is, the seven letters mentioned by Eusebius—were the original letters of Ignatius. This view has been successfully defended against several more recent critics in the commentary of William Schoedel. The Long Recension resulted from theological controversies in the divided church of Antioch in the 4th century, in which both sides appealed to Ignatius’s authority. At that time, the original letters of Ignatius were expanded and other pseudepigraphical letters were added to the collection. The original letters survived in only two textual traditions, one, the letter to the Romans, in the
Martyrium Colbertinum, the other six in the
Codex Mediceo Laurentianus. That the letter to the Romans did not appear in the latter may have been due to the fact that the Middle Recension is dependent upon the collection made by Polycarp, to whom the letter that was sent to Rome was not obtainable, or it might otherwise have been removed from the collection; Eusebius knew of its existence. The Middle Recension, surviving in Codex Mediceo Laurentianus, incorporated also the pseudepigraphical letters of the Longer Recension. It is therefore dependent upon the Longer Recension, though preserving, at the same time, six of the letters in their original form. The shortest Syriac version of three of these letters is a secondary abbreviation, not of the original letters but of the form of these letters that appears in the Longer Recension; they are thus worthless for the reconstruction of the original text, which must rely primarily upon the Greek text of one single early medieval manuscript, aided by several translations and by a Greek papyrus that presents parts of the text for
Symrneans 3.1-12.1.
The history of the transmission and expansion of the Ignatian letters clearly demonstrates the possible fate of a collection early Christian literature that was not protected by canonical status. As canonical protection for the letters of the New Testament did not begin until the end of the 2d century, it must be remembered that also the letters of the New Testament might have been subject to major revision and additions before the canon of the New Testament was created. Such revision and addition indeed occurred in the Pauline corpus with the addition of the Pastoral Epistles and in the new edition of Paul’s letters by Marcion (§12.3c).
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