We have hitherto deferred all consideration of the so-called Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians, from the fact that, instead of proving the existence of the Epistles of Ignatius, with which it is intimately associated, it is itself discredited in proportion as they are shown to be in authentic. We have just seen that the martyr-journey of Ignatius to Rome is, for cogent reasons, declared to be wholly fabulous, and the epistles purporting to be written during that journey must be held to be spurious. The Epistle of Polycarp, however, not only refers to the martyr-journey (c. ix.), but to the Ignatian Epistles which are inauthentic (c. xiii.), and the manifest inference is that it also is spurious.
Polycarp, who is said by Irenæus(1) to have been in his youth a disciple of the Apostle John, became Bishop of Smyrna, and suffered martyrdom at a very advanced age.(2) On the authority of Eusebius and Jerome, it has hitherto been generally believed that his death took place in a.d. 166-167. In the account of his martyrdom, which we possess in the shape of a letter from the Church of Smyrna, purporting to have been written by eye-witnesses, which must be pronounced spurious, Polycarp is said to have died under the Proconsul Statius Quadratus.(3) If this statement be correct, the date hitherto received can no longer be maintained, for recent investigations have determined that Statius Quadratus was proconsul in a.d. 154-5 or 155-6.(4) Some critics,
who affirm the authenticity of the Epistle attributed to Polycarp, date the Epistle before a.d. 120,(1) but the preponderance of opinion assigns it to a much later period.(2) Doubts of its authenticity, and of the integrity of the text, were very early expressed,(3) and the close scrutiny to which later and more competent criticism has subjected it, has led very many to the conclusion that the Epistle is either largely interpolated,(4) or altogether spurious.(5) The principal argument in favour
of its authenticity is the fact that the Epistle is mentioned by Irenæus,(1) who in his extreme youth was acquainted with Polycarp.(2) We have no very precise information regarding the age of Irenæus, but Jerome states that he flourished under Commodus (180-192), and we may, as a favourable conjecture, suppose that he was then about 35-37. In that case his birth must be dated about a.d. 145. There is reason to believe that he fell a victim to persecution under Septimius Severus, and it is only doubtful whether he suffered during the first outbreak in a.d. 202, or later. According to this calculation, the martyrdom of Polycarp, in a.d. 155-156, took place when he was ten or eleven years of age. Even if a further concession be made in regard to his age, it is evident that the intercourse of Irenæus with the Bishop of Smyrna must have been confined to his very earliest years,(3) a fact which is confirmed by the almost total absence of any record in his writings of the communications of Polycarp. This certainly does not entitle Irenæus to speak more authoritatively of an epistle ascribed to Polycarp, than any one else of his day.(4)
In the Epistle itself, there are several anachronisms. In ch. ix. the blessed Ignatius" is referred to as already dead, and he is held up with Zosimus and Rufus, and also with Paul and the rest of the Apostles, as examples of patience: men who have not run in vain, but are with the Lord; but in ch. xiii. he is spoken of as living, and information is requested regarding him,
"and those who are with him."(1) Yet, although thus spoken of as alive, the writer already knows of his Epistles, and refers, in the plural, to those written by him "to us, and all the rest which we have by us."(2) The reference here, it will be observed, is not only to the Epistles to the Smyrnæans, and to Polycarp himself, but to other spurious epistles which are not included in the Syriac version. Dallseus(3) pointed out long ago, that ch. xiii. abruptly interrupts the conclusion of the Epistle, and most critics, including those who assert the authenticity of the rest of the Epistle, reject it at least, although many of these likewise repudiate ch. ix. as interpolated.(4) Others, however, consider that the latter chapter is quite consistent with the later date, which, according to internal evidence, must be assigned to the Epistle. The writer vehemently denounces,(5) as already widely spread, the Gnostic heresy and other forms of false doctrine which did not exist until the time of Marcion, to whom and to whose followers he refers in unmistakable terms. An expression is used in ch. vii. in speaking of these heretics, which Polycarp is reported by Irenseus to have actually applied to Marcion in person, during his visit to Home. He is said to have called Marcion the "first-born of Satan," [——]—](6) and the same term
