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Loading...In my previous post I discussed a textual problem in the writings of Ignatius, simply as a way of illustrating the kinds of textual decisions that need to be made when one publishes a new edition of any ancient text. There are lots and lots of textual variants in the various writings of the apostolic fathers. As with the New Testament (where there are thousands more manuscripts and hundreds of thousands more variants), most of the variant readings do not matter for much. But some of them are of real importance.
Another important textual problem is found in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, our earliest surviving Christian martyrology – that is, the first account, outside the New Testament, of a Christian being martyred for his faith. It is a fascinating account – required reading for anyone interested in early Christianity! In it, the old man Polycarp, Christian bishop of Smyrna, is tracked down and arrested by the local officials, who take him to the arena for public judgment. When he refuses to renounce his faith, he is ordered to be burned at the stake. But through a divine miracle, the flames never touch the saint; they instead form a kind of envelope around him, as if he is bread baking in the oven; and the air is filled not with the smell of reeking flesh but of sweet perfume. The pagan authorities are themselves incensed, and order the executioner to put an end to it all. He stabs Polycarp in the side, and there emerges a dove and such a quantity of blood that it extinguishes the fire.
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Do any churches currently use the Apostolic Fathers?
No, not as scripture.
Evangelicals tend to know very very little (if anything) about church history and thinkers before the reformation. They aren’t generally read or studied in that circle. Some other Christians know and read them — some Episcopalians, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, etc. read them as well as other church fathers. But there is not much of a focus on them outside seminaries, etc. This is in my experience and place at least….
To me, the entire account of the martyrdom of Polycarp seems to be more fiction (flames do not touch him, the smell of perfume, the voice of God, blood putting out the fire) than historical fact. This kind of writing seems such a part of the literature of the time that it raises the question of whether or not this type of elaboration was an accepted writing genre/style of the time and whether this accepted genre/style may have influenced the Gospel sources???
The Martyrdom is certainly *later* than the Gospels. In my forthcoming book I argue that it is a literary forgery.
Dr. Ehrman,
If something is a forgery is it proper to disregard everything in it, that is,should one doubt that Polycarp was a martyr?
Absolutely not. Lots of forged documents have lots of important historical information in them