Did Ignatius say that Pilate crucified Jesus?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Ignatius say that Pilate crucified Jesus?

Post by Secret Alias »

I guess what I trying to tell you is - you recognize I hope that the strongest - the absolutely strongest possibility of all the possibilities - is that we will all die without figuring out this thing called 'earliest Christianity.' It's not like other people before us thought 'they knew' all that there was to know right? It's easy to have certainty about a particular thing if you sacrifice your own sense of truthfulness and fair play. But if you are going to be honest with yourself the only thing you can do with a fair degree of certainty is eliminate possibilities and even then you can't do with absolute certainty. You can say that there are mythical elements to early Christianity. You can say that the gospel is mostly myth. But you can't make blanket statements that because gospel is mostly myth that there is no actually historical basis to the narrative. The first gospel writer might have witnessed or heard from a witness of some crucifixion and then fabricated a myth about 'it all meant' or maybe he didn't. There is no definitive answer possible here.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Secret Alias
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Re: Did Ignatius say that Pilate crucified Jesus?

Post by Secret Alias »

My guess about the story being 'under Pilate' is that it has something to do with 49 or 50 years before the destruction of the temple - i.e. that the Jews were warned in last Jubilee before 'the end' (of Judaism, of the world whatever). 5500 AM is always an important date in chronologies (i.e. 6000 - 500) because 500 resembles 50. Look at this imbeciles website which makes the return of Jews to Israel as 5950 AM. http://www.realitycheq.com/Articles/2-% ... erview.htm
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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arnoldo
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Re: Did Ignatius say that Pilate crucified Jesus?

Post by arnoldo »

Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:31 pm
arnoldo wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:06 pm
Peter Kirby wrote: Mon Aug 07, 2017 7:03 pm
arnoldo wrote: Fri Aug 04, 2017 8:08 am Thanks, however the long and short of it may be that it makes no difference according to the following source.
In the Greek manuscript tradition we find numerous manuscripts of a collection of 13 letters attributed to Ignatius of Antioch, the apostolic father. This is known as the long recension; for 7 of these letters have reached us, but only just, in a handful of manuscripts in a shorter version, which we will refer to as the short version. The differences between the two seem to relate to late 4th century theological arguments, with an Apollinarian or Arian tinge. Finally there is a Syriac epitome of 3 of the letters, and I have seen a reference in Aphram Barsoum to Syriac texts of other letters.
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2013 ... -ignatius/

What are you trying to imply by saying "it makes no difference"?
That the longer version "may" not be a forgery as per Pearse.
The word "forgery" has a special meaning for Pearse here. "Forgery" speaks of intent ("E. however believes that we know the author intended forgery because of the author’s “attempts at verisimilitude”"). So Pearse would find no contradiction with saying that the long version of the letters of Ignatius were produced in the fourth century, expanding the short version, but they were not forgeries... for example.

The relevant question -- in terms of quoting it as the words of Ignatius -- is touched upon only lightly in the quoted internet article by Pearse (which doesn't really intend to address the question at all). Without demurral, Pearse refers to "the discovery in the 17th c. by Archbishop Ussher that the long version had been tampered with, and the recovery of the short version," as the secondary nature of the long Greek version to the short Greek version is about as uncontroversial as anything can be in this field.

The initial quote you made in this thread was essentially based on a mistake. I recommend not compounding that mistake. Pursuing something like "the longer Greek version of Ignatius is original" is something that should be pursued very carefully and deliberately, if at all. (Otherwise, what you're doing is like defending a flat earth because of a casual reference made to the sun rising, which you'd like to make literally consistent.)
I stand corrected, sir. On closer reading of Pearse's blog he appears to be more arguing against the methodology Ehram used to conclude some writings of Ignatius are forgeries than to argue for authenticity. Additionally, I've been looking in to the archives and much ink has been spilt(figuratively speaking) regarding that "Ignatius" was originally a Marcionite. A summary of this hypothesis by Roger Parvus is given by DCHindley
DCHindley wrote:What Parvus does is present the following case:

"the author of the Ignatians [whom he refers to as Theophorus] was a Marcionite, and that his letters were later worked over and interpolated in the interest of making them serviceable to the proto-Catholic church."
This is built on the work of two individuals:

French Catholic priest, Joseph Turmel, under the pseudonym ‘Henri Delafosse’:

"Turmel argued that the Ignatian letters were in large part written by a Marcionite bishop named Theophorus, sometime between 135 and 190 C.E., and that later, sometime between 190 and 210, they were interpolated and edited by a Catholic Christian. Turmel contended it was the editor/interpolator who created the fictitious figure of Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, by combining the Marcionite bishop Theophorus with a martyr named Ignatius who met his end at Philippi and is mentioned in Polycarp’s letter to the Philippians. The same editor/interpolator, according to Turmel, also inserted two passages in Polycarp’s letter, and thereby furnished the newly reworked version of the Ignatians with a personal recommendation from Polycarp himself."

French Catholic priest, Alfred Loisy:

"Loisy examines Turmel’s Ignatian theory and concludes that, though questionable in many particulars, Turmel’s basic contention is correct: the original letters were written by a Marcionite bishop and were later interpolated in the proto-Catholic interest."
Most of what Parvus identifies as interpolations by his Proto-Catholic editor/interpolator are "passages [that] have every appearance of being interpolations" (bolding is mine). Unfortunately, aside from comments about abruptness and subject matter, he does not try to justify his choices by reference to principles of textual or literary criticism.

Parvus claims that interpolation best explains the "mix of doctrines contained in the Ignatians." To help justify his choices of interpolated passages, he uses what we know of the teachings of Marcion's disciple Apelles, who broke with his teacher sometime around Marcion's troubles with the Roman church in 144 CE. These doctrines and the interpolator's proto-Catholic reactions to them, Parvus claims, best explain the "mix of doctrines" noted above.

Parvus summarizes the gist of Apelles' doctrine as follows, derived mainly from Tertullian:
After his separation from Marcion, Apelles continued to hold several of his former master’s teachings. He apparently retained the belief that Christ came down to earth as an adult in the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Lk III:1; IV:31—the opening of Marcion’s Gospel). And he continued, like Marcion, to reject Christ’s conception and birth (virginal or otherwise) by Mary, and so his descent from David. But Apelles decisively repudiated some very significant elements of Marcionism.

In particular:

(1) He abandoned Marcion’s ditheism, and returned to belief in one God.
“Now this Apelles and his school claim that there are not three first principles or two, as Lucian and Marcion thought. He says there is one good God, one first principle …” Apelles’ first principle, however, was not the creator of the visible world. That distinction belonged to one of God’s angels, “a certain angel of great renown … who had the spirit, and will, and power of Christ for such operations.” This angel attempted to make the visible world in the image of the invisible, but he did not succeed. His work was imperfect. Yet another angel, a fiery angel, fell away completely from the supreme God and became the ruler of evil. It was this fiery angel who—according to Apelles—led the Jews astray and was the source of the falsehoods and fables that constitute the Law and the Prophets.

(2) Apelles set aside Marcion’s docetism and replaced it with a doctrine peculiar to himself. He held that Christ possessed truly human flesh, but it was not obtained by means of a human birth: “They (Apelleans) assert it for a certain principle, that a body without nativity is nothing to be astonished at … He (Christ) borrowed, they say, his flesh from the stars, and from the substance of the higher world.” In the previous chapter we saw how Theophorus’ ‘New Man’ concept, as applied to Christ, is apparently derived from I Corinthians XV. According to Tertullian, the Apelleans used a verse from this same part of I Corinthians to defend their teaching on Christ’s flesh: “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven” (I Cor. XV:47).

(3) Although Apelles retained Marcion’s rejection of the Jewish Scriptures, his position differed significantly from that of his former teacher. Marcion rejected those writings as religiously irrelevant, whereas Apelles rejected their credibility and trustworthiness.
http://bcharchive.org/2/thearchives/showthread54b3.html
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