Polycarp and the Ignatian Canon

So it is that we have only choice if we want to know the truth about the origins of the Catholic tradition. We have to pay careful attention to the development of the existing Ignatian letters. It is only in these falsified epistles that we can lay bare the motivation of 'Polycarp' (for simplicity sake we will so refer to the editor throughout). When we take a critical look at these documents – some of the earliest in the Church - the ‘method’ to Polycarp’s apparent madness suddenly becomes manifest. There are as we noted at least four generations of rewrites here. There is the lost original material from the ‘first generation’ when Polycarp secretly acknowledged himself as the ‘seraph’ of Christ. In those early days he predicted his imminent fiery martyrdom. He may have said this as he was being taken away to Rome only to fail at his original purpose. It may have been declared just before his death in 166 CE.

The exact context of the "fiery one's" declaration is not entirely clear. What is clear is that the oldest surviving version of the Ignatian texts is the Syriac recension discovered by Cureton over a century ago. The texts that these texts are one generation removed from anything resembling an 'original declaration' on the part of the 'fiery one' - viz. the historical Polycarp.

It is only in this ‘second generation’ Syriac material that some discernable details of Polycarp’s life begin to emerge. At some point after his return from Rome Polycarp suddenly changes his tune about an immediate need for him to die. There was work that needed to be done establishing a worldwide Church. As we noted in the last chapter Polycarp develops his old persona into a separate figure named ‘Ignatius.’ In due course Ignatius effectively becomes the ‘opening act’ for Polycarp’s ultimately successful martyrdom in 165 CE. Yet for the moment let’s take a brief look at the aforementioned ‘second generation’ material associated with Ignatius – i.e. the three short Syriac letters discovered by Cureton at the turn of the twentieth century. Scholars mostly ignore this discovery concentrating instead in an age old debate between Catholic and Protestant camps about the authenticity of the so-called ‘long’ and ‘longer’ recensions which are preserved in Greek. Yet there can be no doubt that Ignatius’ original material appeared in Aramaic; the name only makes sense if it were originally preserved as ‘seraph.’

The Syriac letters have an air of authenticity about them. It is possible to imagine that these came from the hands of a visionary saint as he was traveling through Asia Minor and Greece announcing that he was a ‘dead man walking.’ As we shall demonstrate shortly it is important to note that these three Syriac texts also don’t have the characteristic subscription noticeable in the long and longer versions of the texts. Here in the Greek material we see an inevitable acknowledgement that each text has been dictated by Ignatius to his secretary Polycarp. This is among the most troublesome aspects of these long and longer epistles. There is no plausible explanation for the presence of Polycarp’s fingerprints on almost every letter other than the fact that he was the original author. Polycarp might have been able to fool the simpleminded in his flock but it is quite difficult to accept the degree to which Ignatius commends Polycarp to each community.

Yet there are other problems with the basic framework for the production of this material. Why was Ignatius – supposedly a prisoner in chains - allowed a ‘stop over’ in Smyrna to instruct Polycarp to write letters to the churches on his behalf? It doesn’t make much sense but we should allow the other side to give it their best shot. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains the story this way:

The stay at Smyrna, which was a protracted one, gave the representatives of the various Christian communities in Asia Minor an opportunity of greeting the illustrious prisoner, and offering him the homage of the Churches they represented. From the congregations of Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, deputations came to comfort him. To each of these Christian communities he addressed letters from Smyrna, exhorting them to obedience to their respective bishops, and warning them to avoid the contamination of heresy. These, letters are redolent with the spirit of Christian charity, apostolic zeal, and pastoral solicitude. While still there he wrote also to the Christians of Rome, begging them to do nothing to deprive him of the opportunity of martyrdom.

Again there is no way that one can believe even for a moment that a prisoner being taken to Roman would be allowed by his captors to hold a series of ‘meet and greets’ in a city along the way. However if we concentrate on the last mention of an epistle to the Romans which can be demonstrated to have expanded from the ‘short’ original Syriac form to the ‘long’ and ‘longer’ Greek it is possible to begin to piece together an explanation.

We see clear traces of Polycarp’s personality in dramatic imploring of his audience not to stop his martyrdom. One imagines someone who seeks to commit suicide and to gain attention - “I’m going to kill myself and nobody can stop me!” If we accept the possibility at least that the Ignatius’ correspondances might have been developed from older material associated with Polycarp the whole idea of him being a ‘bishop of Smyrna’ might now be seen to be full of as much hot air as many of his other claims. The whole idea of his association with Smyrna might have everything to do with the fact that it was here that Polycarp originally sent out letters and held ‘meet and greets’ with various prominent Christian leader before his initial attempt to secure a martyr’s death in Rome.

We will leave all of this for the moment and return to our scrutinizing of the ‘short,’ ‘long’ and ‘longer’ versions of the Ignatius letters. At the very least let us acknowledge that there has to be some truth to the fact that Smyrna was somehow connected with Polycarp’s original suicide mission. At some point, this failed martyr persona became associated with a person named ‘Ignatius’ and Polycarp merely becomes his scribe in Smyrna. To this end it is important to scrutinize the concluding sentences of almost every surviving Ignatian letter especially as they are now preserved in the ‘long’ and ‘longer’ Greek version. In each case we see ‘little notes’ which acknowledge the fact that the material was really written by Polycarp or if you prefer the Catholic claim – dictated by Ignatius and written down by the ‘bishop of Smyrna.’

For instance when ‘Ignatius’ is made to say his farewells to the community of Philippi he announces “let your prayers be extended to the Church of Antioch, whence also I as a prisoner am being led to Rome. I salute the holy bishop Polycarp … in whose stead may my soul be found.” This is one of a dozen such references which abound throughout the surviving Ignatian canon of epistles. Yet within this corpus there are a number of letters including the Ignatian address to the Philippians which is already acknowledged to be spurious correspondances. In other words, some of the Ignatian letters are acknowledged to have been ‘faked’ by someone. So one has to wonder why Polycarp isn’t identified as a strong suspect. Of course the real answer again has everything to do with Polycarp being such a pillar to the Catholic Christian community. It would be ‘impossible’ that a saint could be guilty of the crime of forgery. Yet the very fact these spurious letters were passed on down through the official Church necessarily proves that someone within its ranks wrote the material. It isn’t hard to narrow down a ‘short list’ of suspects. After all Polycarp’s ‘fingerprints’ are found all over the text!

Of course scholars like to dismiss Ignatius’ Epistle to the Philippian because it is recognized as a ‘spurious’ correspondence. Nevertheless it is not owing to Polycarp’s name Polycarp’s name appearing at the bottom of those texts that they are dismissed. As Cureton rightly points out “there seems to be no other evidence, external or internal, why some should be chosen and others rejected … the only ground which has been the specification of some of them by Eusebius and his omission of any mention of the others.” Indeed ancient Antiochene and Alexandrian bishops did not distinguish between the ‘spurious’ and ‘authentic’ Ignatius material. It’s ‘all good’ for them!

So let’s go back to an epistle universally acknowledged to be ‘authentic’ for a moment. Let’s take the Ignatian ‘Epistle to the Magnesians.’ Magnesia was a city in the Meander River Valley very close to Smyrna. The Letter to the Magnesians begins with the standard Polycarpian ‘exhortation for Catholic orthodoxy’ put into the mouth of Ignatius. However Ignatius’ charge to the Smyrnaean bishop this time goes beyond mere doctrinal matters. Ignatius commands Polycarp to find a successor to sit upon his Episcopal throne. He begs that the community is “mindful of me in your prayers … and of the Church which is in Syria … for I stand in need of your united prayer in God, and your love, that the Church which is in Syria may be deemed worthy of being refreshed by your Church.” As I said earlier here we see the re-emergence of Polycarp’s ulterior motive behind the forgery – he wants to use the epistle to help establish a rival church in Antioch. And just in case anyone doubted it for a moment immediately after that ‘commandment’ to rebuild by the old Pope we read him praise our forger saying that this epistle was written at Smyrna where he was not only “refreshed” by the faithful “along with Polycarp, the bishop of the Smyrnaeans.”

This isn’t the only letter openly acknowledged to have been written at ‘Polycarp’s house’ in Smyrna. Take for example the letter addressed to the community at Philadelphia which is also regarded as ‘authentic’ by almost all scholars. Philadelphia was a city in Lydia mentioned in the ‘Revelation of John’ (Rev 1:4,11; 3:7) of the Catholic New Testament canon. Attalus Philadelphus built the city on the lower slopes of Mount Tmolus and gave it his name. It is also noteworthy that Philadelphia was situated one hundred miles west of Smyrna. In this letter we read Ignatius dictate much the same request as we read in the epistle to the Magnesia declaring that:

it is reported to me that the Church which is at Antioch in Syria [needs you] to elect a deacon to act as the ambassador of God so that he may rejoice along with them when they are met together, and glorify the name [of God].

Polycarp is only too eager to help Ignatius write and post this letter. After all his ‘bishop of Antioch’ commands the Philadelphians - “if ye are willing, it is not beyond your power to do this [electing] for the sake of God; as also the nearest Churches have sent, in some cases bishops, and in others presbyters and deacons.”

Of course many of my readers might be asking themselves – who is this great candidate that we see Polycarp spending all this time ‘helping’ to get on the throne? All of this will be revealed by the end of the chapter. For the moment let us remind ourselves that ALL of these Greek letters were falsified. It doesn’t matter who it is claimed Ignatius ‘chose’ as his candidate because the framework is entirely artificial. This was really Polycarp’s choice only dressed up as the last wish of a dying saint. As Detering points out, these letters were never originally sent out to any one community. They were artificially developed by Polycarp as a ‘unit’ and then sent out as a kind of ‘unfolding narrative’ revealing a new direction for the Church in the latter half of the second century. Polycarp had a particular individual in mind already from the get go and used these ‘historical documents’ related to Ignatius and the contemporary church network of his day to affirm his selection.

As Antioch seems to be the ‘end game’ of this whole process let’s take a closer look at the letter of Ignatius to the Antiochenes. Antioch was a Greek city established at the time of Alexander the Great which lay sandwiched between Asia Minor and Syria. As we have seen Polycarp had already established that ‘Ignatius’ was the bishop of this city. When we look to the letter that Ignatius supposedly directed to his home See it is noteworthy that he begins by praising:

Polycarp, that most worthy bishop, who is also deeply interested in you, salutes you; and to him I have commended you in the Lord. The whole Church of the Smyrnaeans, indeed, is mindful of you in their prayers in the Lord.

We all know the score by now. It shouldn’t be surprising that Ignatius declares that Polycarp is ‘deeply interested’ in overseeing the affairs in Antioch. Nor again that almost every academic since the nineteenth century acknowledges this letter is a fake.

Until now we have only concentrated our efforts on Ignatian letters scholars universally acknowledge as ‘spurious’ texts. We are told by various studies that there are noticeable differences between the ‘spurious’ and ‘authentic’ Ignatian letters. Yet there are many ways to account for this – namely that Polycarp’s efforts were developed in stages. Most of the so-called ‘authentic’ letters can be traced back in some form to the original short Syriac letters which come from the time before Polycarp’s original failed suicide attempt. The ‘spurious’ letters likely represent Polycarp attempting to write new material completely from scratch. Indeed what almost never gets mentioned by scholars is the fact that those very epistles deemed ‘authentic’ by contemporary studies share many – if not all - of the stylistic and literary elements common to those deemed ‘spurious.’

So when we return the Polycarp’s role in the development of the long material it has to be noted that his ‘signature’ appears at the conclusion of almost all of these documents just as it does among the so-called ‘spurious’ texts. We see that each of the three shorter Syriac texts was expanded to make the longer Greek letters accepted by scholars with the addition of new material which seem to echo Polycarp’s beliefs as preserved in his only surviving letter to the Philippians. In the long Greek texts Ignatius now emphasizes the importance of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘submitting to the bishop’ which did not formerly appear in the shorter Syriac texts. This is very significant for it says that Polycarp focus changed in the intervening period. For reasons that are not clear to us now he postponed his martyrdom in order to allow him time to gain more adherents to his cause.

Let’s focus on the transformation of the original texts. If I am to demonstrate what happened to the Ignatian material in the ‘second’ and ‘third’ generations of its development I would start by pretending to write a short correspondence:

I want to die in Rome. I hope the animals rip me apart and gash my brains out. Maybe then I can be famous.

This isn’t exactly what Ignatius wrote but it gives the general sentiment. Let us now come back to the sentence and decide upon reflection that something needed to be added. This is exactly what Polycarp did years later and developed the text into something like this:

I want to die in Rome yet please don’t stand in my way. For I fear that you love will prevent me from doing what I am supposed to. Nevertheless I want order in the churches. You should listen to the bishop do everything he says. Just think of me and pray hard that I carry out my task (because if you don’t follow my orders I am going to fail and come back and I will blame you all for my failure). So it is that I hope the animals rip me apart and gash my brains out. “For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” And our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more revealed and maybe then I can be famous.

Again I don’t want anyone to think that this is an exact quote from any letter. It is only my parody of the methodology used by Polycarp to expand the Ignatian canon. To take matters one step further, the reader has to believe me when I say that when scholars had to decide between the two versions they declared – ‘You know what? The short epistles erased all the true words of Ignatius!’

Now I don’t want to get too far off track here but this preference of scholars for ‘longer’ and even ‘expanded’ texts takes us right back to our original discussion. You see the Marcionites had shorter versions of all the letters addressed to the apostle we identify as ‘St. Paul.’ The Catholic material betrays all the signs of also suffering from ‘expansion’ with the addition of a heavy emphasis on ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘church discipline.’ There are also a whole series of ‘new epistles’ written in the name of this ‘apostle’ which the Marcionites rejected as spurious and which scholars – recognizing obvious ‘differences’ – identify as ‘deutero-Pauline.’ Indeed Von Campenhausen already identified the likely candidate for the Pauline forgeries – viz. Polycarp of Smyrna.

Of course its better we get back to the issue at hand and that is identifying the unmistakable expansion from the three short Syriac texts to our “long” texts of Ignatius ‘to the Romans,’ ‘to the Ephesians,’ ‘to the Trallians’ and ‘to Polycarp’ (many of these identifications are missing on the Syriac texts). There can be no doubt that this transformation came from the hand of Polycarp and manifests his ambition for worldwide domination of the Church of Christ. I point to Polycarp’s ‘signature’ at the bottom of each page of the ‘long’ Greek Ignatius texts. These words are interestingly never present in the short Syriac texts. Polycarp hadn’t yet become ‘Polycarp’ nor ‘Ignatius’ yet Ignatius. That is why there is no mention of Ignatius telling Polycarp to write on his behalf in the Syriac recension. Apparently ‘Ignatius’ hasn’t found a good secretary yet. He writes with his own hand and uses that same hand to post the letters!

With this in mind let us focus on the example provided by the letter ‘to Polycarp’ for a moment. Outside of the title ‘Polycarp’ appears nowhere in the main body of the Syriac letter. The truth is that as the letter now stands it could have been originally been directed to just about anybody. The Syriac version of the letter also ends abruptly. It closes with the cursory note - ‘I salute him who is reckoned worthy to go to Antioch in my stead, as I commanded thee.’ This is of course the germinal seed behind Polycarp’s later ecclesiastical activity but it is by no means as developed as it would later become. Again as we said earlier ‘Polycarp’ had not yet become ‘Polcarp.’

Indeed if we look now to the manner in which this same text becomes reworked in the long Greek version we are immediately struck by addition of Polycarp’s name throughout the text but especially at the end. We see standing in the very place where our last citation was taken the addition of the following section in the ‘long’ version:

It is fitting, O Polycarp, most blessed in God, to assemble a very solemn council, and to elect one whom you greatly love, and know to be a man of activity, who may be designated the messenger of God; and to bestow on him the honour of going into Syria, so that, going into Syria, he may glorify your ever active love to the praise of God … Now, this work is both God's and yours, when ye shall have completed it. For I trust that, through grace, ye are prepared for every good work pertaining to God. Knowing your energetic love of the truth, I have exhorted you by this brief Epistle. Inasmuch as I have not been able to write to all the Churches, because I must suddenly sail [to Rome] … I beg you, as being acquainted with the purpose of God, wilt write to the adjacent Churches, that they also may act in like manner, such as are able to do so sending messengers, and the others transmitting letters through those persons who are sent by thee, that thou mayest be glorified by a work which shall be remembered for ever, as indeed thou art worthy to be … Grace shall be with him for ever, and with Polycarp that sends him.

Remember this is not considered to be among the so-called ‘spurious’ Ignatian texts. These words do not appear in the Syriac originals but were added to the original material some time after the first and second versions had already appeared. We have to say again that the only person who could have added the material is the very man cited in the text – Polycarp of Smyrna.

We needn’t stop there. We can move on to yet another Syriac epistle - this time the one addressed from Ignatius to the Ephesians to demonstrate a similar pattern. Polycarp’s name once again happens to appear in the text. However the text has even more reasons for being very significant to our present examination. This Ignatian letter to the Ephesians identifies its falsifier as the same individual who added material to the Marcionite gospel, the Marcionite epistles and more importantly new ‘apostolic material’ to the Marcionite New Testament canon as a whole.

Yet let’s not get ahead of ourselves for the moment. There can be no doubt that in Polycarp had a certain ‘Onesimus’ from the earliest days of his ‘church building’ activities. His name appears even in the Syriac version of the Ignatian letter to the Ephesians which reads:

Seeing, then, that we have become acquainted with your multitude in the name of God, by Onesimus, who is your bishop, in love which is unutterable, whom I pray that ye love in Jesus Christ our Lord, and that all of you imitate his example, for blessed is He who has given you such a bishop, even as ye deserve [to have]

The name ‘Polycarp’ doesn’t appear in the main body of any of the shorter Syriac letters but we find instead ‘Onesimus.’ This likely means that ‘Onesimus’ knew Polycarp when he was still ‘Ignatius’ or vice versa.

Now let’s expand our focus back to the question of Polycarp’s development of the Marcionite canon for a moment. As I mentioned earlier ‘Onesimus’ is added to the so-called Pauline corpus - or if you will – the letters which were first in the possession of the Marcionites. Why can we be so sure of this? Polycarp added the Pastoral Epistles to this canon of apostolic letters. He also undoubtedly added names and material to various letters as we see him doing to the shorter Syriac texts of ‘Ignatius’ yet this Onesimus in particular as we read now in the canonical ‘Epistle to Philemon’:

although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus— I appeal to you for my son Onesimus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me. I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel … Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back for good— no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has done you any wrong or owes you anything, charge it to me.

Indeed it is absolutely incredible that any scholar can utter even one disparaging word against claims of ‘Marcionite corruption’ of the gospel when this reference is left in our canon.

Perhaps some critics would argue that we might be dealing with two different ‘Onesimus’ figures – one who lived in the ‘apostolic age’ and the other at the ‘time of Ignatius.’ Yet the Catholic tradition refutes that position. The same Onesimus who was freed by ‘St. Paul’ is understood to have sat on the Episcopal throne of Ephesus. As one scholar notes “there is something certainly striking and suggestive in the way in which after mentioning Onesimus, their visible bishop and just afterwards again in junction with three other names, Ignatius goes off with a series of allusions to the Epistle of Philemon.” Knox interestingly thought that the same evidence suggested that Onesimus was the compiler of the New Testament canon at Ephesus who included the otherwise insignificant letter of Philemon owing to its positive reference to himself. We however can take that idea one step further – just as Polycarp is recognized to have falsified the Pastoral Epistles he invented a letter which commended his ‘right hand man’ at Ephesus as a way of raising the stature of his whole organization based in the ‘Johannine See.’

Indeed the smoking gun as it were is only discovered when you compare the New Testament canons of Marcion and Polycarp side by side. The Marcionites didn’t have a Pauline Epistle to the Ephesians at all. This letter instead was identified as being ‘to the Laodiceans.’ It is only when the original New Testament established was ‘developed’ by Polycarp that the titles switch and even then the attribution of this same letter being to ‘the church of Ephesus’ is incredibly weak. In a number of early CATHOLIC canons the identification of ‘Ephesus’ is completely lacking as Peter Thomas O’Brien notes “traditionally Paul’s letter has been understood to have been written to believers in Ephesus … [h]owever the words ‘in Ephesus’ are absent in some of the best manuscripts. Also the impersonal tone of the letter and its more general contents cast further doubt on the authenticity of the words in Ephesus.” Indeed among the witnesses against the presence of Ephesus are Basil, Origen and Tertullian.

The point then is that the most likely scenario given everything we are developing here so far is that Polycarp adapted the original Marcionite New Testament canon to suit his building of a Johannine church at Ephesus. There can be no doubt that Polycarp was a forger – after all we see his fingerprints ‘expanding’ and ‘developing’ earlier versions of his own correspondances under newly developed pseudonyms. The letters of the Marcionite apostle were similarly manipulated. While we no longer have the original New Testament canon of this ‘Markan community’ we can piece together what must have been the original process by watching the shorter Syriac Ignatian correspondances get systematically lengthened as Polycarp gets a second chance at life. In each case we see Polycarp adding his very ‘signature’ to the bottom of the new longer Greek text.

In the ‘longer’ epistle to the Ephesians Polycarp makes Ignatius close by confirming that:

My soul be for yours and theirs whom … ye have sent to Smyrna from where also I write to you [this epistle] giving thanks unto the Lord, and loving Polycarp even as I do you.

The situation with the final letter of the three surviving Syriac texts is a little more complex. The one original short letter addressed to no community in particular strangely becomes divided into two different Greek epistles. The first part of this text becomes the long Greek ‘epistle to the Romans’ and the remaining portion then is the long Greek ‘to the Trallians.’ If we examine the subscription to each we see that at the conclusion of the long ‘to the Romans’ text Polycarp has Ignatius say:

write these things to you from Smyrna by the Ephesians, who are deservedly most happy.

While in the new ‘to the Trallians’ he ends by declaring:

I salute you from Smyrna, together with the Churches of God which are with … The love of the Smymaeans and Ephesians salutes you. Remember in your prayers the Church which is in Syria …

It is all too amazing to believe! Irenaeus would have us believe “a man who was of much greater weight, and a more steadfast witness of truth, than Marcion.” We see Irenaeus and his followers accuse Marcion of falsifying the holy writings of previous generations when in fact it was their master Polycarp who can be proved to be guilty of the charge. As we have seen it was he who crafted these counterfeit documents in the names of historical individual whose names had no independent existence from his own imagination. And this is these imaginary friends represent the real and only foundation for the claims of the Holy Catholic Church.