Loading...Yesterday I introduced the letters of Ignatius of Antioch (from around 110 CE), a bishop of the largest church in Syria (and one of the largest in the world at the time), written while en route to his martyrdom in Rome, to several of the churches that he had met with during his journey. The letters are addressed to churches in Asia Minor, in Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, and Smyrna, along with a letter to the bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp (who also wrote a letter included among the Apostolic Fathers), and a letter to Rome — seven surviving letters altogether.
That has long struck me as interesting: we have seven authentic letters of Paul; seven letters dictated by Christ to churches of Asia Minor in the book of Revelation (including two of the churches addressed by Ignatius); and there are seven letters of Ignatius. Seven is the perfect number. How odd. I’ve tried to figure out a rhyme or reason for it, but don’t think there is one. We just *happen* to have seven authentic letters of Paul — it’s not that he wrote only seven. I think it all has to be a coincidence. (But I’ll welcome your hypotheses!)
Ignatius’s letters are highly significant
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
It seems like a range of likelihoods of “magic numbering” in those three sets of letters.
The seven “presently accepted as authentic” Pauline letters might have been in a collection somewhere, but then when included in Marcion’s collection of 10 epistles, that seems like it would tend to submerge the number seven for those specific epistles. So it seems like not much scope for magic numbering there.
In the canonical Revelation, it feels like it would have to be one magic number or another — if not 7, then 3 or 12.
These letters might be somewhere in between. After having written some, and with a rough idea of how many more he might have time to write, it *might* have occurred that 7 was a good number to settle on, but it equally well just might have been “get as many done as possible”, and it was 7 that was possible. So it’s seems to be deep in the grey zone of “maybe, no real way to tell”.
Is the Greek of Ignatius and Josephus the same as New Testament Greek?
I’ve heard a claim that New Testament Greek (such as the Gospel of John) is constructed as if it were written by a non-native speaker (like someone who’s mother tongue is Aramaic: maybe suggesting that the Gospel writers were non-Gentile Greek speakers/writers).
Or is the Greek of John very different from the Greek of the synoptics?–Presumably “Luke” was a gentile.
(apologies if this is a “deep in the weeds” kind of question. But I note that educated Christian apologists like to toss around these kinds of tidbits that can’t be easily verified by the average layperson).
They all write Koine Greek. The Greek of the NT wsa not created for the occasion. It was simply the “common” Greek of the time (Koine means “common”). Different authors write in different styles, of course, but it’s all a widely known language. John’s still is different from the Synoptics and from Paul and … they also have differences between each other. (Paul’s own style is different form the style of Ephesians and 1 Timothy, e.g., books alleegedly wrten for him). The NT authors were all native Greek speakers; nothing suggests they had Aramaic as their primary language.
Bart: What do you think about the dating of Ignatius by Eusebius? I started really digging in on Theophilus’s letters supposedly 50+ years after Ignatius, comparing the Christology between the two and confounded how much more advanced the theology/chistology of Ignatius is over that of Theophilus. To me, it seems that Theophilus’s theology would have predated Ignatius. Even though Theophilus does not name Jesus but rather suggest some sort of entity (word) much like Paul according to Acts 17 does not name Jesus but rather an “appointed one”, the “word” would represent Theophilus’s christology in his letters.
So if I’m thinking “on track” just looking at theology/christology, it seems that Theophilus’s christology would maybe have predated even Luke, especially since Theophilus quotes Mathew but no hint of Luke. There is just no way that Luke written around 110ce would not have reached Antioch one of three epicenters of christianity by 175ce. So, is it possible Theophilus predated Ignatius, and was the Theophilus of Luke/Acts?
It’s a good question. I think the big problem is that it is impossible to line authors up chronologically based on the sophisticatoin of their theological views. As a clear example, Paul has a much higher Christology than any of they Synoptic authors, yet wrote well before them. Theological views do not develope in a linear fashion from one view to the next in any one place let alone in variety of times and places. That’s why some Christians today have “older” views of things (for example, “adoptionist” Christologies) even though they are living, say, after Nicea!
So too with quotations. Justin Martyr never explicitly quotes Paul, but that’ doesn’t mean he was writing before Paul. Marcion shows no knowledge of John but it doesn’t mean he was writing before John. Etc. Etc.
Excited to be flying to RDU in the morning to attend your final university lecture, Bart.
Glad you were able to make it!
How many times do these letters and the Bible say to obey Bishops? Or presbyters? This seems like a running theme in early Christian Literature?
It’s a repeated theme in Ignatius. I haven’t done an exact count thought.
Dr. Ehrman,
Archeology gives us these three floods:
Younger Dryas Flood approximately 10,000 BCE
Tigris/Euphrates Flood at Ur approximately 3500 BCE
Tigris/Euphrates Flood at Shuruppak approximately 2900 BCE
Mt. Ararat was closer to Shuruppak than Ur, and Noah lived around 2340 BCE.
QUESTION: As a Biblical Critic, you and other scholars would say Noah’s flood was the Tigris/Euphrates Flood at Shuruppak?
(Of the three floods only the Younger Dryas Flood was not local to Tigris/Euphrates, but it was more global befitting destroying all humans across the globe, as the Bible suggests.)
Thank you.
I suppose different scholars have different views. There are tons of floods we never hear of and have no evidence of. My sense is that flood stories arose in communities htat had experience them and saw them as acts of divien judgment.
Correction: The Younger Dryas Flood was 12,800 years ago.
The biblical flood was described as more than a local Tigris/Euphrates flood. The Younger Dryas Flood was more than a local Tigris/Euphrates flood.
It is disappointing that the Genesis flood seems to date to 2900 BCE when there was a much earlier flood of greater impact dating to 12,800 years ago.
See YouTube Channel: Chronicles of the Lost, Video: AI Just Discovered What Caused the Great Flood 12,800 years ago.
Bart, I’m stepping away from the subject a bit, but I’ve wanted to ask you this question for some time. When you were an Evangelical Christian, did your faith politicalize you? In other words, were you a follower/advocate of the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, or Faith in the Family, etc?
My political views were conservative growing up in a Republican family. I moved to the Democratic side after hearing Adlai Stevenson III give a lecture at Wheaton College before the 1976 election (promoting Carter); I was still an evangelical at the time. When the Moral Majority came along, I was already in what I suppose by definition must have been the Immoral Minority.
Presidential Candidate Mondale showed up at my step-father’s church [phD pastor married them].
I wonder how he felt [Mondale] even SF can be very Republican!
Dr Ehrman, I heard a talk recently from a historian (Modern, not Ancient) who was quite emphatic that St Peter never went to Rome and died in Judaea. I think he was drawing on an article by the late Michael Goulder, (who I think Mark Goodacre knew) that said more or less the same thing. My view is that one cannot say categorically that Peter never went to Rome. The letters of 1 Clement and Ignatius suggest obliquely that he did. And listening to your recent podcast on the subject I think you too wouldn’t completely rule it out. Is that fair? Many thanks.
I don’t think either 1 Clement or Ignatius suggest Peter was in Rome. But I don’t think there’s any way to prove that he did *not* go there. It’s a matter of probabilities. For me, Paul’s letter to the Romans provides good reasons for thinking he wasn’t there at the time and almost certainly was not the “founder” of the church there.
“Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church.” Irenaeus:Against Heresies, bk III, 1:1
“Simon Peter the son of John, from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, brother of Andrew the apostle, and himself chief of the apostles, after having been bishop of the church of Antioch and having preached to the Dispersion — the believers in circumcision, in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia — pushed on to Rome in the second year of Claudius to overthrow Simon Magus, and held the sacerdotal chair there for twenty-five years until the last, that is the fourteenth, year of Nero.” Jerome:Illustrious Men #1
Anything written during that time to contradict this?
No, by the time Jerome was writing 300 years later, that was the standard line. (Irenaeus is repeating what he knows from Papias).
Can we assume that Ignatius was familiar with the four Gospels? If so, did they form the basis of his theology? How about Paul’s letters? Was he familiar with and influenced by them?
He shows some familiarity with Matthew, in my judment, though the issue is debated; I don’t see evidence of him knowing the others. He knows of some of Paul’s letters explicitly, but he doesn’t quote them and it’s hard to say how they influenced his thinking.
Dr. Ehrman, do you think the lack of a codified Christian canon, at that point in time, contributed to Ignatius’ insistence on looking to the bishop as the source of authority?
It’s a little hard to answer; (xome) Christians thorughout history have insisted that the head of the church was the chief authority (even for interpreting Scripture when there *was* a canon); I’d say that makes it hard to know how an author’s emphasis would change if later developments had transpired before his day.
So would you say Ignatious was a proto-dyophysite?
His theology is so loose around the edges (as was the theology of everyone at the time) that he was more or less proto *everything* except Judaizing and docetism….