In the Syriac version, the passage reads: "Be thou wise as the serpent in everything, and harmless as to those things which are requisite as the dove."(4) It is unnecessary
to add that no source is indicated for the reminiscence. Ewald assigns this part of our first Gospel originally to the Spruchsammlung,(1) and even apart from the variations presented in the Epistle there is nothing to warrant exclusive selection of our first Gospel as the source of the saying. The remaining passages we subjoin in parallel columns.
None of these passages are quotations, and they generally present such marked linguistic variations from the parallel
passages in our first Gospel, that there is not the slightest ground for specially referring them to it. The last words cited are introduced without any appropriate context. In no case are the expressions indicated as quotations from, or references to, any particular source. They may either be traditional, or reminiscences of some of the numerous Gospels current in the early Church, such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews. That the writer made use of one of these cannot be doubted. In the Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, c. iii., there occurs a quotation from an apocryphal Gospel to which we have already, in passing, referred: "For I know that also after his resurrection he was in the flesh, and I believe he is so now. And when he came to those who were with Peter, he said to them: Lay hold, handle me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit, [——]—]. And immediately they touched him and believed, being convinced by his flesh and spirit." Eusebius, who quotes this passage, says that he does not know whence it is taken.(2) Origen, however, quotes it from a work well known in the early Church, called "The Doctrine of Peter," [——]—];(3) and Jerome found it in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews," in use among the Nazarenes,(4) which he translated, as we shall hereafter sec. It was, no doubt, in both of those works. The narrative, Luke xxiv. 39 f., being neglected, and an apocryphal Gospel used here, the inevitable inference is clear and very suggestive. As it is certain that this quotation was taken from a source
different from our Gospels, there is reason to suppose that the other passages which we have cited are reminiscences of the same work. The passage on the three mysteries in the Epistle to the Ephesians, c. xix., is evidently another quotation from an uncanonical source.(1)
We must, however, again point out that, with the single exception of the short passage in the Epistle to Polycarp, c. ii., which is not a quotation, differs from the reading in Matthew, and may well be from any other source, none of these supposed reminiscences of our synoptic Gospels are found in the Syriac version of the three epistles. The evidential value of the seven Greek epistles is clearly stated by an English historian and divine: "My conclusion is, that I should be unwilling to claim historical authority for any passage not contained in Dr. Cureton's Syriac reprint."(3) We must, however, go much further, and assert that none of the Epistles have any value as evidence for an earlier period than the end of the second or beginning of the third century, if indeed they possess any value at all. The whole of the literature ascribed to Ignatius is, in fact, such a tissue of fraud and imposture, and the successive versions exhibit such undeniable marks of the grossest interpolation, that even if any small original element exist referrible to Ignatius, it is impossible to define it, or to distinguish with the slightest degree of accuracy between what is authentic and what is spurious. The Epistles do not, however, in any case afford evidence even of the existence of our synoptic Gospels.
