Why the Common Gospel Citation of 1 Clement and Polycarp's Letter to the Philippians Point to a Massive Editorial Reworking on the Part of Irenaeus

Okay, I said I wouldn't get into my theories about Polycarp but I think it is essential to understand where I am coming from when I say I have strong doubts about this text called υπομνηματα and later associated with Hegesippus. 

The real question which everyone in Patristic scholarship wants to avoid at all costs is whether a text written in 147 CE stayed the consistent over time. Let's start with the idea that someone came to Rome and wrote a chronological narrative in the tenth year of Antoninus. Did Irenaeus change that text c. 180 CE and write an introductory narrative in the name of Polycarp? I have given reasons why I think this is so. It is amazing also how these introductory words written AFTER 147 CE always get recycled by various writers and cause people to think the five volume work was all devoted to later Church History. 

The question however is did the υπομνηματα continue to exist in the exact form established by Irenaeus throughout the third century and until the time that Eusebius finally saw it as a work attributed to 'Hegesippus'? The answer is clearly NO. By the time Clement sees the historical work established in 147 CE it associated with Josephus the Jew. By the time Eusebius sees it and everyone thereafter it is by the hand of 'Hegesippus.' 

All of this suggests that the work was constantly undergoing transformations. Nevertheless the idea that the text was somehow still referenced as a Josephan narrative as George Syncellus the ninth century chronicler writes "these things [the execution of James the brother of Jesus] Hegesippus, an historian worthy of our faith, one of those [who is a follower] of the orthodox word among us, with whom also Josephus agrees, writing what is not in disagreement [with him], that this became the cause of the conquest of the Jews in the time of Vespasian."

Indeed as we have already noted a long time ago Origen understands that a version of this story was part of Josephus's narrative. 

The point is that we have countless examples of second century texts that undergo radical transformations. Look at Irenaeus's Refutation and Overthrow of Knowledge Falsely So Called (itself a compilation of shorter Irenaean 'lectures'). It somehow tranforms into the Philosophumena. A lost text of Justin mutates into BOTH Tertullian Against Marcion Book Three AND Against the Jews. 

So we have now touched upon the MACROCOSMIC understanding of the transformations that MUST HAVE taken place with the original Josephan υπομνηματα which Irenaeus somehow attributed to Polycarp. Let's look at just one part of the chain of transformation that inevitably occurs when Irenaeus gets his hand on a text RELATED to Polycarp. 

I will leave the Ignatian corpus which is the easy and strongest argument for us to make. I will take up the 1 Clement connection with the letter of Polycarp because it has had so much written about it already and Helmut Koester's discussion in particular. 

Everyone here I suspect knows that the Letter to the Philippians is Polycarp's only surviving letter. What is less well known is that P N Harrison (Polycarp's Two Epistles to the Ephesians 1936 Cambridge) came up with an observation that the letter is actually a combination of two letters to the Ephesians. This thesis was endorsed by Hans von Campenhausen (Polykarp von Smyrna 1951) and has been widely accepted ever since.

Here is Koester's explanation of the phenomenon:

The absence of the term 'gospel' is equally noteworthy in the Letter of bishop Polycarp of Smyrna to the Philippians ... Polycarp's first letter, written at the time of Ignatius, is preserved in chapters 13 - 14 of the extant document. But it is in the portions which belong to the later letter (chapters 1 - 12 and 15) that several quotations of gospel materials occur.

One of the quotations, Pol. Phil. 2.3, is copied from the quotation of the saying of Jesus in 1 Clem 13.1 - 2, including the quotation formula ("Remember what the Lord said when he was teaching"). However, while the quote in 1 Clem 13.2 had been drawn from the oral tradition, Polycarp, who knew the Gospels of Matthew and Luke corrected the text in order to establish a more faithful agreement of Jesus' words with the wording of the written gospels from which he had also drawn his other gospel materials (Phil. 2.3b, 7.2, 12.3). At the same time it is remarkable that Polycarp never uses the term 'gospel' for these documents[Koester Ancient Christian Gospels p. 20]

Now I know that Koester is a much more respected scholar than I will ever be but I think we should all just stop for a moment and NOT JUST MAKE A WHOLE BUNCH OF ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE TEXT as Koester does here. If we remove Koester's 'assumptions' we could only say the following about the material:

The absence of the term 'gospel' is equally noteworthy in the Letter of bishop Polycarp of Smyrna to the Philippians ... Polycarp's first letter, written at the time of Ignatius, is preserved in chapters 13 - 14 of the extant document. But it is in the portions which belong to the later letter (chapters 1 - 12 and 15) that several quotations of gospel materials occur.

One of the quotations, Pol. Phil. 2.3, is paralleled by the saying of Jesus in 1 Clem 13.1 - 2, including the quotation formula ("Remember what the Lord said when he was teaching"). However, while the quote in 1 Clem 13.2 had been drawn from the oral tradition, Polycarp, someone who knew the Gospels of Matthew and Luke corrected the text in order to establish a more faithful agreement of Jesus' words with the wording of the written gospels from which he had also drawn his other gospel materials (Phil. 2.3b, 7.2, 12.3). At the same time it is remarkable that Polycarp never uses the term 'gospel' for these documents

The yellow text is where Koester goes beyond what is safe for us to assume. It may be a common assumption in scholarship, but it is in my mind a very dangerous and LAZY presupposition. 

Are my readers with me now? Koester just assumes that the copies of Polycarp's letter came down to us like they were shipped from the ancient world by Federal Express. The idea that someone had a vested interest in reshaping Polycarp's image as a witness to the orthodoxy that eventually emerged in Rome during the reign of Commodus - i.e. IRENAEUS - hasn't even crossed his mind.

The point again is that everyone agrees there is this parallel between Phil 2.3 and 1 Clem 13.1 - 2 where someone has 'corrected' the original saying in 1 Clement so that the readings match those of Matthew and Luke (even if the STRUCTURE of the quote still retains the original citation of 1 Clement):

Be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be forgiven to you; as you do, so shall it be done to you; as you judge, so shall you be judged; as you are kind, so shall kindness be shown to you; with what measure you measure, with the same it shall be measured to you [1 Clement 13. 1 - 2]

Judge not that ye be not judged, forgive and it shall be forgiven unto you, be merciful that ye may obtain mercy, with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again [Polycarp Phil. 3.2]

What almost no one has noticed is that the original reference from 1 Clement actually resembles what is found in the Diatessaron. 

Judge not, that ye be not judged: condemn not, that ye be not condemned: forgive, and it shall be forgiven you: release, and ye shall be released: give, that ye may be given unto; with good measure, abundant, full, they shall thrust into your bosoms. With what measure ye measure it shall be measured to you. See to it what ye hear: with what measure ye measure it shall be measured to you [Diatessaron x. 13f]

Now you see the way scholar work is that they will only focus on the question of the relationship between the first two citations. Here is Stephen Carlson's wonderful effort to explain how the citation from Polycarp was harmonized by someone to look more like Luke and Matthew.http://www.textexcavation.com/measureformeasure.html

Yet what Koester and others deserve to be taken to task for is the fact that their explanation fails to take into account why the Arabic Diatessaron would so resemble the restructured text in Polycarp's Letter. 

In other words, if it were just some idiosyncratic effort on the part of Polycarp to 'correct' what 'Clement of Rome' said a couple of generations earlier, why does this effort show up almost exactly (remember the text called 'the Diatessaron' that we have now was likely translated from Syriac into Arabic) in this other text that was nothing short of canonical in the eastern parts of the Empire. 

The point is that this wasn't just some 'slight corrective effort' on the part of Polycarp. The author of 1 Clement had a gospel (I don't believe that Flavius Clement was the name of the original author of this or any of the Clementine texts). In this and other Letters of Clement we see clear signs that the author's gospel resembled a non-canonical gospel (either the Gospel of the Hebrews or the Gospel of the Egyptians). 

The letter which goes by the name 'Polycarp to the Philippians' uses an identical formula as what we see in 1 Clement but then someone came along and made the gospel readings conform to the canonical gospels. The purpose of these corrections were to demonstrate that 'Polycarp' was orthodox. Yet strangely the editor cannot identify 'the gospel' or 'gospels' by name. This is left strangely ambiguous. 

Given the fact though that the Diatessaron so closely resembles this 'little correction' - i.e. making the saying of Jesus resemble what appears in the canonical gospels - we are left with two possibilities:

(1) Polycarp not only corrected this reading in the saying in what is now called '1 Clement' because he knew the existence of 'according to Luke' and 'according to Matthew' but that this 'little correction' was part of a massive effort at harmonizing the gospel of '1 Clement' to conform to the four canonical gospels. In other words, the text which now passes as 'the Diatessaron' was also edited by Polycarp.

(2) Irenaeus, the man who claimed to be the only authority on Polycarp, changed the original readings to make Polycarp an indirect witness for the 'Gospel in four.' Remember it is textual critics who see the resemblance between Polycarp and 1 Clement. The text never gives any sign that author 'A' is drawing from author 'B'. They just happen to make the same arguments from the same - seemingly unimportant - gospel passage 

Under the second scenario, a single, long gospel was shared by the authors of '1 Clement' and 'Polycarp.' They were part of a tradition that used 'the Gospel of the Hebrews' or some such text and then Irenaeus not only corrected the reference in Polycarp but also reformulated a version of the 'mixed gospel' (i.e. the Diatessaron) where the general structure of the narrative remained consistent but where the text itself was used to witness the original readings of the four texts of the new canon. 

In other words, Polycarp did not use the four gospels. Everyone in his day knew that he used only one gospel which he received from John. That is why Irenaeus can never say that 'the elder' (viz. Polycarp) used or promoted 'the four-faced gospel.' 

Nevertheless, Irenaeus COULD say that the single, long gospel which the Valentinians like Florinus (see Connolly's article on the use of the Diatessaron in the Valentinian tradition) said that Polycarp used 'really' represented a 'mixture' of the four gospels. This finally explains why Tatian's text was lost very early in early Christian history. The Diatessaron is a re-forming of the original, long gospel SHARED by Tatian, Polycarp and Theophilus. 

In any event, scholars like von Campenhausen, Koester and Carlson want to keep the explanation of how 1 Clement's gospel citation became Polycarp's in to the Philippians WITHOUT explaining the Arabic Diatessaron. The reason for this is obvious - THEY ARE TOO LAZY TO 'MOVE ALL THE FURNITURE IN THE HOUSE' and work up a sweat. Above all else they want to show that the discovery of a parallel between 1 Clement and to the Philippians 'does not upset everything.' 

The same person who 'changed' the reference in 1 Clement to the citation in 'to the Philippians' ALSO had a hand in developing the text behind the Arabic Diatessaron (undoubtedly also the one used by Ephrem). This cannot be avoided. It is impossible to believe that the editor of this proto-Diatessaron constructed the whole text to 'add' the change of 'to the Philippians.' Nor it is possible to suggest that 'it was just a lucky hit' - i.e. that both the author of the proto-Diatessaron and the editor of to the Philippians arrived at the same changes to the gospel of '1 Clement' independently of one another. 

The bottom line is that either Polycarp changed the entire gospel of the author of 1 Clement and then naturally cited his 'corrected' Diatessaron during the course of his citation of the original material OR Irenaeus corrected BOTH 'to the Philippians' AND the original gospel of Polycarp which eventually became 'the Diatessaron.'

The corollary of either possibilities is that Polycarp used a text like the Diatessaron or Irenaeus 'corrected' the original text of 'to the Philippians' to make it look like he knew the four canonical gospels THROUGH the Diatessaron. Either way, the implications are the same. The real Polycarp of history wasn't as orthodox as later authorities pretend that he was. Maybe that's why Irenaeus most often avoids mentioning his name and refers to him by the cryptic epithet 'the elder.' 

I think this shows that other people - viz. like Florinus and Gaius of Rome - had 'dirt' on Polycarp. But I will demonstrate this in greater detail when my Against Polycarp finally gets published.

And one more thing - Eusebius tells us that (a) the gospel references from 'Hegesippus' were all from the Gospel of the Hebrews and (b) he and Irenaeus shared peculiar use of at least one unique text. Syncellus identifies 'Hegesippus' as a 'disciple of the apostles' which is identical with Irenaeus's description of Polycarp.