.jpg)
It is just SO pathetic. These experts are very good at DESCRIBING what is written in the text. But anyone could do that. If I paid my real estate agent or even my house cleaner to learn the otherwise useless language of ancient Greek ('useless' meant here with respect for life in the twenty-first century) and tell me what the text 'said,' I would probably only get a little insight than Koester and von Campenhausen. It would be the equivalent of an associate professor at a major university.
But because you have all these people who could have been real estate agents and house cleaners ('could have been' if they didn't share the aversion to 'real work' which runs through the psyche of academics generally) taking what their limited intellects CAN SEE is present in the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp, when someone like me comes along and takes a look at the bigger picture of how all of this body of work relates to the Irenaean falsification effort, THEY HAVE TO circle their wagons and 'caution' people about my conclusions.
For the problem is that these people have so little self-knowledge or knowledge about the forces IN THEIR OWN LIVES and in their own world that they are utterly incapable of seeing the big picture at work at the time of Irenaeus.
Just look at the Anglican Church (the Episcopal Church for you Americans reading this blog). What happened at Canterbury in the last millenium was the same historical process which took place in Byzantium and then Rome before that. Oh but when you say 'the Roman government' had a role in the development of Christianity. Well, then you prove yourself to be an 'irresponsible' academic.
The truth is that in my opinion, these people who say things like that don't live in the real world. That's why they became scholars. They like dead concepts because they fool them into thinking that they have control over the fluidity inherent in real things.
I'd say they were as a whole naive - at worst stupid - but then I am betraying my jealousy that they were smart enough to find a way not to work for a living and get paid for it!
In any event, since we are supposed to be talking about Irenaeus' manipulation of Polycarp's legacy, let's acknowledge WHAT IS AGREED BY ALL WITNESSES about this supposed 'Church Father.' After reaching a certain age, this enigmatic wandering preacher decided that he wanted to end his life in a fiery martyrdom.
Lucian says that after his death certain of his followers claimed they were in possession of letters associated with this 'fiery one.' Lightfoot sees this as a reference to the Ignatian corpus and most think he is right. Of course there seems to be a microchip lodged in the brains of academics which prevents them from seeing that Ignatius might originally have been Polycarp in a previous incarnation.
They forget (or are made to forget!) that the Ignatian letters come in three different lengths - short, long and longer - demonstrating, as we saw with the Letter of Polycarp that the editor or editors not only continued to produce letters for the 'fiery one' after his death, but were constantly amending these letters to make 'Polycarp' accord with new standards of orthodoxy emerging in the world.
So here is the problem again. When people think about the early Church they often have a hard time challenging their own presuppositions about what ‘Christianity’ should look like at its inception. This is why so many people divert their view when they are confronted with the image of Polycarp. He is the furthest thing from our popular notion of what a ‘believer in Jesus’ should look like.
Yet this is precisely the point. According to the portrait that emerges from Irenaeus, Polycarp becomes a mouthpiece for the establishment of the Catholic Church. This understanding couldn't be wholly made up of course. Perhaps Polycarp was indeed trying to establish a favorable bishop to sit in the episcopal throne of Antioch, but the 'real Polycarp' - i.e. the historical figure 'rescued' from Irenaeus' editorial emendations was no Church organizer. This was Irenaeus' speaking through his editorial emendations to the original texts (if there even were 'original texts' to some of the garbage which appears int he Ignatian canon).
Irenaeus also undoubtedly exaggerated Polycarp's 'war' with a figure named ‘Mark’ (Marcion etc.). There may have been an underlying conflict with the Alexandrian community but was Polycarp really advocating a complete 'break' with the Markan tradition? Was Polycarp's John wholly separate from the Alexandrian 'Mark who was also called John'? Was Polycarp advocating the 'condemnation' of heretics? A careful reading of Irenaeus' reports reveals that the Roman Church Father had great difficulties making this case. The evidence of Lucian suggests otherwise. Florinus' witness of Polycarp also certainly contradicted these claims.
The bottom line is that no one had ever heard of wholly separate John of Asia Minor until Irenaeus invented him. In order to pretend he was a real historical figure we have to believe that this apostle made his way from Palestine to the bishop’s ‘backyard’ in Asia Minor. In my mind this only makes sense if someone already accepted that St. Mark (who was also called John) traveled to Alexandria and then went 'somewhere else' (which has always been the basis to the Alexandrian tradition cf. the Letter to Theodore).
Indeed it is interesting to note in this regard that one of John’s final acts was to establish Polycarp as the successor of 'Bucolus.' Yes certainly 'Bucolus' is identified as 'Catholic bishop of Smyrna' (a position that never existed as long as Polycarp was alive) but this legendary detail might well have developed from bucolia, the traditional site of the Church of St. Mark in Alexandria and the headquarters of Egyptian Christianity.
Whatever the case, the only thing again that we can certain of regarding this alleged 'Church Father' is that Polycarp set out to prove his legitimacy through getting himself burned alive in front of a large number of witnesses. Lucian characterizes this as little more than a desire for notoriety. So how does the later Christian tradition explain the phenomenon?
Interestingly Polycarp's para-suicidal tendencies become an outgrowth of the explanation of this 'apostle John' of Asia who no one ever heard of before.
You see Christians always kept records of when martyrs died. Because John had no real existence he didn't have a feast day. To get around this difficulty a narrative developed that Polycarp was attempting to complete 'what was missing' in the life of his forerunner.
We are eventually told in the Harris Fragments of the Martyrdom of Polycarp that Polycarp wasn't seeking glory for himself (as Lucian claimed) but it was part of an effort to redeem John and the Johannine tradition. Apparently since no one had ever heard of 'John' nor was there a commemoration of his martyrdom a new 'spin' on the old problem of why Polycarp wanted to have himself killed in front of a large crowd of witnesses emerged - Polycarp had die 'for John.'
I resist the temptation to psychoanalyze this new development but it should be apparent that Polycarp is now not only being made into the only living witness for Ignatius, but also for 'John' because both were created in his living image. They never had any real historical reality. It is again only another example of how the memory of Polycarp was manipulated to 'answer objections' raised by hostile outsiders.
So on the one hand we have the Catholics having to admit that there was no martyr feast for John (there is a stupid story in the Acts of John about him burying himself in a grave!) and then there is martyr that no one ever heard of - 'Ignatius of Antioch' - who supposedly sent around letters to announce his death in Rome sometime before Polycarp's death. As noted scholars have linked the production of the letters of the Ignatian canon to Lucian's mention of followers of Polycarp/Peregrinus manufacturing letters on his behalf.
And what is the 'real truth' here? The only thing which remains consistent throughout all of these things is Irenaeus consistently exaggerating the scope and intent of Polycarp's activity so as to make it conform with his own efforts to reshape the Church.
As such there might well have been some truth to the fact that the 'real Polycarp' was trying to poach converts from the established 'Marcionite' (i.e. Markan) communities. Perhaps in some way the act of martyrdom would prove once and for all to these people that ‘the Holy Spirit’ was with Polycarp and if the ‘Holy Spirit’ was from God, or that Polycarp must have been 'a man of God' and therefore a faithful witness to apostolic truth.
Indeed I will even entertain the possibility that the Ignatian letters might have grown out of a first para-suicidal attempt at establishing ‘a name for himself' at Rome. Remember that incident we just cited where Polycarp went to Rome and managed to get everyone mad at him (including the Emperor) but somehow only manages to get himself thrown out of the city for life? Perhaps part of the reason Polycarp escaped death was that he managed to build up such an expectation for martyrdom and attracted large crowds that the authorities were prevented from executing him for disturbing the peace.
This can certainly be discerned from Lucian's narrative.
Of course this might also explain why Polycarp HAD TO get himself killed during the Olympics. We can see that he might have realized that his reputation would be compromised with a handful of letters floating around in Asia Minor where he says that he is going to Rome in order to die and ponders his future as a religious leader. Polycarp wonders to himself whether people will think he is a fake. He asks himself ‘is my reputation ruined?’ And so the final act in Polycarp's life is now established.
All we need to do is look again at the canon of letters now attributed to Ignatius and slowly dissect their contents layer after layer until will get an understanding of what they originally represented.
Over several rewrites we discover a body of epistles read together as a canon to not only declare the intentions of the 'fiery one' to attain martyrdom in Rome but to support Polycarp’s supervision of an election for a new Pope – not at Rome – but at Antioch! I have written about this in a previous post. I doubt very much that there ever was a 'Papacy' in Antioch let alone Rome during Polycarp's life time. The question however is whether any of what now appears in even the shortest 'Ignatian letter' can be connected with the 'real Polycarp' of history.
The Ignatian letters show their author desperately pleading with Christian communities in Polycarp’s ‘sphere of influence’ to accept Polycarp's authority to find and establish a man to serve as Ignatius’ replacement on the Antiochene Papal Throne. Who was on the throne at the time of Polycarp's martyrdom? Theophilus of Antioch.
Of course the only complication in all of this is that the Ignatian canon is eventually developed to make it seem as if the material derived from early in the second century. The martyr now is not Polycarp but someone named 'Ignatius' who - through Polycarp of Smyrna - manages to get Hero as the new 'servant of the bishops,' a title which can be seen reflected in later Antiochene rituals.
It is difficult to navigate our way through reworked material which originally came from an age half a century after it was originally written. Yet I believe I can safely surmise that Irenaeus was originally looking to establish a PRECEDENT for the election of the Catholic Church's highest officer. Again it is important to note that it is important that argument was developed for the Antiochene See rather than Rome.
One might even argue that if indeed Polycarp actively sought out his own martyrdom that he was actively looking to establish Theophilus of Antioch on the throne AND moreover Theophilus was the addressee mentioned at the beginning of the gospel associated with Acts (remember I take Luke 1:1 to have been the subscription on the original Diatessaron-like gospel in the hands of the Maphrian Church rather than a separate Gospel of Luke). Kuhn interestingly enough equates Theophilus of Antioch with 'Theophilus' through a whole different set of assumptions.
If some or all of this accepted then we have an ORIGINAL effort by Polycarp, the martyr that famously suffered a fiery death and then a generation later Irenaeus deliberately augmented the original material associated with that effort to a wholly separate figure named 'Ignatius' for whom Polycarp was an active secretary and publicity agent.
By this logic, the Acts of the Apostles already existed at the time of Polycarp. The interest of Acts to SUBORDINATE John Mark as a mere 'witness' to the efforts of Peter and Paul and Antioch as the place where Peter and Paul reconciled their hostilities all fits within Polycarp's original interest in Antioch. It also explains why the Church headquartered there still calls itself the Maphrain Church.
But let’s go back to our original point.
The Ignatian canon might well have originally represented Polycarp 'the fiery one' advocating the selection of a particular disciple to fill the vacant throne in Antioch. Yet once Irenaeus took over the canon the long and longer Greek recension of Ignatian letters reflect a new understanding set fifty years earlier.
Now we are to understand that Ignatius supposedly gave to Polycarp to carry out ‘the will of God’ in the supposedly ‘pre-existent’ worldwide Catholic Church. This wasn't just a 'church of Asia' headquartered in Antioch.
The reason for the change is obvious. The letters now in effect proved that Polycarp wasn’t heading a new 'innovation' developed in the second century but merely carrying out a dead man’s wishes (who happened to be the last link to the apostolic past at Antioch) on behalf of the 'eternal' Catholic Church. As a devoted friend, Polycarp was duty bound to see these commands carried out.
Of course if we look at the three 'Ignatian' letters preserved in SYRIAC we see signs of major reworking of Polycarp's original message by a later editor (undoubtedly Irenaeus of Rome). The language, in fact, reflects an affinity for Valentinism (and Florinus' claims to his master). Yet more importantly again, if you discount the editorial additions to the beginnings of each of the three letters - and in particular THE ENDING OF THE THIRD LETTER (which is the only part of any of the Syriac letters which was not retained in the long and longer Greek copies of the original) we are freed to read the collection as NOT EVEN referencing a Roman martyrdom of any kind. The original context might well have been Polycarp's successful martyrdom in 165 CE.
And one last observation - isn't it strange that all the early texts preserved by the Catholic Church all survive owing to involvement of synergoi of the original authors. Whether it be Josephus, Paul or now Ignatius, the college of Catholic synergoi was certainly very active. Irenaeus must have been their patron saint ...
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."