All About Ignatius with Timothy Easley

Well, greetings welcome to the vine line, my name is James White. It's a blustery windy soon -to -be rainy

Afternoon here in Phoenix, Arizona. Well, okay, it's gonna be wait till this evening, but we get excited about things like that We actually got rain last week.

It was so exciting. My solar plant panels are cleaned off for the first time in like eight months

Great, but anyways, we are coming to you from the big studio because we want

We could have done this in the other studio too, but one of the reasons we made this whole thing was so we could have guests and and They wouldn't it wouldn't just be like you're on zoom or something like that Even though we are on zoom but look a little bit different and so I have a guest along today and Not know

I should mention before we get started that I Rich has gotten things to work here

But that The thing is they didn't work before the thing it always scares me is you get something to work and Then you start the program and it will stop working.

That's just the that's how it works with sound systems It's how it works with everything. So We're just hoping that everything will continue to function the way that it's it's supposed to function and so I asked

I Asked our brother here for a bio so I'm gonna blame him for it.

I did not write it myself most of the time People pull my bio off of our website

That's when I find out how out of date it is and stuff like that I go looking for it, but this should be directly up to date

So we're about to be joined by Eminent church historian. No, that's not and that's not in the bio.

He didn't put that there Timothy Easley and his wife Jen have four children live in central,

New York and see that that's That's like living in a place where you have where we're all taxation is without representation

Okay, because if you live in New York Then you're just run by New York City and everybody else out in the country very conservative place

Just have to deal with all the utter insanity that flows out of the city. They live in central, New York surrounded by a large extended family

Hmm now if that was said about the Appalachians then that would be a little bit questionable, but New York Yeah, okay

He has been a pastor for 13 years and everybody knows once you get to 14 years your hair

Turns gray and when he isn't preparing sermons He is likely reading some obscure book for either his dissertation or another episode of his

Church History and Theology podcast which I will try to remember to link for you when we when

I type all this stuff up as Far as he is concerned in addition to eliminating daylight savings time.

He believes the month of March Should also be banned now. I'm just reading. I'm reading what's given to me

But Timothy Easley is joining us. He's also hiding from various terrorist groups in a secret location and Very safe Sort of a sort of a bunker type thing.

Isn't it? Isn't that where you are? Yeah. Well, it might as well be close enough and Someone will undoubtedly take a screenshot of you in your bunker and Put vice president

Vance's face on you because that's what they have to do with everything. Evidently. That's just a new rule

I thought it was funny for about three days. It is now just please people. Can we get a life do something here?

It's just like every every online meme and always it always outlives its humor Yeah, but this is this is like I mean they're gonna be putting his face on Dogs and cats and everything else pretty soon.

It's just it's gone way way way beyond being humorous anymore. So We I I don't remember maybe you can remind me

How did we start chatting? about memory issues relating to Ignatius Well I made several posts about it up on X and was talking about the nature of the difficulties that there was in just producing an episode that's up to date on the current scholarship regarding Ignatius his letters and everything else that went on and I had kind of cryptically posted a few things and I think it was the

I think it was the post that I said I have never seen a manuscript tradition more convoluted than that of Ignatius his letters

Yeah, and you texted me later on that evening and you said, all right unload.

What do you got? I've been seeing you talking about Ignatius. What what do you got? And I just sent you a good portion of everything

I had So what I had been dealing with for six months

I kind of unloaded on you all at once without really giving you an orientation Which by the way, anyone who's ever going to Ignatian studies needs an orientation class first And that's kind of what we're hoping to help clear up a little bit tonight but so I handed you all that and talked a little bit about where I was at and said, you know,

I'm still working six months of obsession for a single episode and I'm you know, that's definitely reached obsession levels for me and I said about a month later.

I was like, you know what? I'm I'm done. I can't do I can't do this anymore I literally is for maybe two episodes sometime this summer

Because I'm not even done with the first season of the first century yet, and we've been we've been going for ten months on that Wow, that's that's a lot of time.

So so I remember Glancing through all that stuff and You know, the first thing across my mind was

I was looking at dates on articles and stuff like that and a lot of it was 98 and beyond, you know, basically last quarter century.

So and of course, I graduated seminary in 89 and Back then

I have my my trusty Apostolic Fathers volume from Lightfoot and Harmer got all sorts of wonderful little page points in it here for all my favorite quotes and of course, it has the

Greek and it's got a It's got a short in actually. Yeah, though.

They didn't clearly include the introduction this doesn't have Lightfoot's introduction that is found in the

Beastie Longer very very much longer Rendition here.

In fact, it's funny. I pulled this off the shelf to bring it in here today And it sort of fell open of its own because there was a business card

Stuck in here and I look at the business card and I go Pretty sure that was 89 or 90 and it's inserted at Spurious and interpolated epistles in regards to Ignatius, so Providence in fact, that's that's the page immediately before The one

Use it, you know, I wish I had I wish I had Photocopied not photocopied this scanned it and we could have put it up because This has well,

I'll just I mean rich can't do anything with this but What how to go go over there?

Wait, wait, that would be there you go well, it looks like you can table you can do something with that rich hit three and And cut and three and go and it's a button there you go you can do this

No, I did not kill the camera You know Well, you know what?

You know what? The lens cover is closed Why'd it do that?

Wait a minute. We pay you the big bucks. Okay. All I do is the theology stuff you're supposed to do everything else that was working what two minutes ago and Okay, it's it's open now.

I Touched your you all the controls are over there. Mr. I'm just sitting here trying to you know avoid all the

Jesuit plots to mess this whole thing up and There they must have found a way to pay you off So anyway while rich is playing with that over there there is on page 234

I assume you have this, right? Do I have that one no,

I have this will show you when I went to seminary this is the Holmes Apostolic father. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Holmes is

Holmes is for for young kids. Yeah. I mean I was in kindergarten in 1989

So, oh, well, all right. Okay. Well Okay this one, okay.

All right. There you go. So this if you haven't seen this I'll Scanners it for you.

This is like the five volume lightfoot, but I knew I had seen this I was trying to find it and I just found it while we went on the air.

Here is a this is Eusebius's Listing then the short form and then the middle form with one column for Greek and Latin one column for Armenian and one column for Coptic and long form

Greek and Latin So this is useful but and that's the whole point is

That what we're talking about is not something that's some new argument new

Discussion everyone who has you know when I my first Had to work through Ignatius and seminary and look,

I'll be honest. Um, I was already involved in apologetics and so I Recognized the importance of Ignatius's testimony to the initially to the deity of Christ and You said you were in kindergarten in 1989 1989 the

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society Did a series in the

Watchtower magazine Trying to turn all the apostolic fathers into Jehovah's Witnesses It was horrible.

It was it was just one of the most Amazing twisting of well for Ignatius They only quoted from pseudo

Ignatian materials They did not quote from anything considered to actually by anybody whether we're talking short ascension medium anything they only quoted from pseudo

Ignatian materials and You know that they could get away with it back then there wasn't anything called the

Internet Now it doesn't work so well for them along those lines, but I had written a big long paper after I graduated seminary

I Became the scholar residence at Grand Canyon. And so I wrote this paper refuting their their abuse of Ignatius so reading about textual history the manuscripts and so like that I Was probably the only person in my church history class that did any of that to be honest with you for for obvious reasons but Still from that point onward, you know

Once you've read once you read Lightfoot and of course Lightfoot's introduction is a book unto itself. It's huge right after that, it's sort of like You know the what you want to do when when

I taught a class of the Apostolic Fathers. Hey with the students there I Just wanted them to become familiar to know where These were all coming from to be able to see the differences in I mean there's major Differences in quality of the theology and how biblical theology is and stuff like that You know between the

Shepherd of Hermas and Barnabas and Ignatius and Clement there's there's a big big big difference

So getting into all the stuff that you've been getting into wasn't really Necessary and I didn't hear much this

I didn't hear anything about these rumblings and some people say well, how is that even possible?

when when when I I'm just giving a side thing and then we'll we'll start getting into a little bit more but when

I Presented a doctoral program Down at Potchester University Northwestern University now, but back then it used to be known

Potchester University in Potchester, South Africa my doctor of honor had done his PhD under Metzger at Princeton and I did the whole presentation of what

I wanted to do what I want to dive into and Then once I started getting into it and gathering my sources lo and behold something has developed since I graduated from seminary and since he graduated seminary called

CBGM and It changes everything and I introduced him to CBGM now

He's teaching in the area, but there's there that doesn't necessarily mean that You know

Everybody's reading every article that comes out No one could no one could possibly keep up with all the articles that come out in all the various areas and church history or textual

Criticism or anything else? So anyway Once you start talking about this stuff,

I'm sitting here my I'm sort of not knocking the rust off of okay You know,

I remember very clearly attempting at one point to try to Find parallels between the

What's called the genuine epistles the seven canon? middle recension and The Latin and Just almost giving up.

It's like what why bother this? There's so it's just so massively different and So I looked at some of the articles you said and I was going okay, what we'll do

When I've got some extra time in the spring I'll I'll get hold of this guy.

What we'll do is we'll do a dividing line. We'll sit around and I'll sort of play devil's advocate and I'll I'll push back from the light foot

Ian perspective we can explain that in a moment and and you know, we have some geeks that Watch the dividing line and and they'll they'll geek out on it and they'll think it's great and and fine

And so I still had that in the back of my mind But it's because it was in the back of my mind that what happened in the debate happened in the debate and for those who didn't watch it or don't want to watch it or Recognize it's a completely different topic than the debate was

At the end of the second cross -examination period With literally 90 seconds.

Okay I get I get the standard Ignatius question and What is that?

Well depends on who you're debating I've used Ignatius to demonstrate the early provenance of the deity of Christ There's that section in Ephesians section 9

There's one one physician of flesh and a spirit generate and generate, you know true

God in True life in death son of Mary son of God. I mean, it's almost

Chalcedonian hypostatic Union theology And I also

I also defended Ignatius in my debate with dr. Price different dr. Price than most people

James Price who put Ignatius back around 150 180 But I don't think for the reasons that some people do today so I Get asked the question and the big mistake

I made was I figured and 90 seconds Maybe I can make a quick statement provide a little bit of context and then get to my main point which was

The texts that are found in the generally accepted rendering of Ignatius the seven

Epistles is an anti docetic polemic it uses the term taught dock iron

Which is that's tosses. That's where it came from. So he's arguing against people Who were saying that Jesus does not have a physical body and that's what

I wanted to get to But I felt because I've been you know, you you made me do that reading that maybe maybe

I should at least try to acknowledge the fact that there are complexities to the

Readings of Almost anything you can ascribe to Ignatius Well that didn't go too well because halfway through what

I was saying my opponent kicked the plug on the light on his table out and so I'm sort of sitting here and I've just said something about You know difficulties with the manuscript tradition.

I look up and My opponent is under his desk okay, so that sort of startled me just a little bit but and then

I realized he was Plugging the plug back in of the light under the desk. And so I ended up I'm like, okay

I need to repeat what I just said, but now I've got to hurry up even more and And end up I didn't even give much thought of it until he gave his closing statement

Where he understood me to be denying that Ignatius existed. I did I had not denied that Ignatius exist

I said that there are people who would question that because of how Complicated the textual history of Ignatius epistle.

And I agree with you. I I've never seen any Certainly not in any of the major church fathers.

Is there any more complicated? Divergent redacted clearly added to or subtracted from History of the of the text for anybody there's plenty of forgeries obviously like the

Oh, yeah, Clementine homilies and all that kind of stuff, but for fully developed Added recensions

You know coupled together in manuscript traditions with all those forgeries and having still the text of the originals

I'm not aware of one if there is I know there's difficulties with like for instance a good section of origins

Books are only maintained through refinances Translations into Latin and you know, he talks about, you know changing some stuff around and editing some things here and there

But definitely not on this level. I mean and that's kind of one of the things that was that was you know

I mean when I went through seminary, I had a bit of a different experience than you because I mean I went through You know not 15 years ago.

And so when and this was how I knew to go look into this right because When we went through it, there was there was just some

Something stuck out with the references to the recension. I had a really good church history professor and I don't know if he was familiar with stuff going on, but he made it this little side comment kind of stuck in my head and You know,

I've taught through church history multiple times I've dealt with Ignatius and all this kind of stuff, but you know only ever did it the same way that is typical

You know you you know, there's these three recensions the third one, you know, this and that will explain this in a second and You know and and just made passing reference to it

And then this past year when I when I made up my mind that I was gonna go quite exhaustively and slowly through church history

I saw a brick wall of Ignatius, you know about a year in right when I start the second century

I was like, you know what I want to get down to the bottom of that real quick And yeah, as it turned out that wasn't real quick because I found out that Ignatius as you say has a manuscript tradition

That is more complicated than anything. I have run into certainly. I don't know of another it doesn't mean there's not it just He maxed out my experience that's for sure.

Yeah very much so and and most people most people who are not familiar with There are many people known to us in early church history only by secondary sources

So there are people everything we know about them is from other people quoting works that we don't even possess anymore and people don't think about Well, okay, how long later is this person quoting from that person and how many manuscript generations have been

I've been there and are they quoting it directly or they going off top their head or they paraphrasing.

I mean, there's just so many factors that can go into You know anybody who's spent almost any time with Eusebius the father of church history knows there's all sorts of questions about How did he do history and how did he work with manuscripts and where do you get his information and and There's just all sorts of stuff like that that that most people

I'm just happy to get most people in a church to pick up a book that talks about church history Let alone let alone go to the point where they're going.

Well, what about the sources and and and things like that? and there are parallels between doing

New Testament textual history and The early church fathers except we just have so much more

I mean you mentioned origin Oh my I think that's the thing that really stood out to me was I mean my my experience in textual criticism and and textual studies and manuscript traditions is on New Testament and Septuagintal studies and things like this.

I I've Never we don't run into anything of this magnitude like that, you know outside of perhaps the you know

The Dead Sea version of Jeremiah for instance, right? so, you know and so you got big questions there, but you know,

I mean But as far as I mean, this is an entire corpus from an entire author

That is affected and nothing and nothing else outside of that on that kind of scale So yeah, it just stood out to me so much

I think because we're we are we are enormously Spoiled when it comes to New Testament Manuscript traditions.

Yeah, there's no two ways about it. So That resulted in this whole development of this big thing that I'm an

Ignatian mythicist and I'm attacking Ignatius and all the rest of stuff when when in reality I Read from an article that you had originally sent to me and then

Someone else sent it to me Just just recently. I think yesterday actually and And yeah, the date and authenticity the

Ignatian letters an outline of recent discussions and when you when you read The introduction it basically says everything that I tried to say with much more detail in you know, just a matter of seconds, but it

Specifically says hey, this is what's this is what the conversation is about right now. This is what's going on So I didn't

I wasn't making anything up So we decided to do this so that we could set the record straight and actually help people to understand

What's going on with it? So let's Go back to the beginning and let's go. All right

How do we know that a man named Ignatius? existed

When did he exist and where okay, so People living today think that we just look up his social security number and you know

The information is just right there in the computer and it never ever worked that way That's not not how it functions

So if you're if you are going to prove someone's existence and say

I'm approaching this as an apologist I'm pretty certain that I have quoted

Ignatius a few times in debates with Muslims and I've not had anyone challenge me textually on what

I said, but I know they could and So I have to be thinking about how do you respond to that?

Am I being fair? Am I using one standard for my sources a different standard when

I quote? Hadith in regards to Muhammad or something like that I'm that's that's what

I'm thinking about. And so the reality is as far as physical evidence

There's nothing in Antioch My understanding is off top my head if I recall somewhere around 115

Around that time period there was a massive earthquake and most of Antioch was destroyed was rebuilt afterwards

There's no Inscriptions, there's no Church of Ignatius, you know, there's nothing nothing like that His trip all the way from Antioch to Rome long trip

There's nothing there that you would expect to find there's nothing in Rome that you'd expect to find

So there's not archaeological stuff things like that, but that's true of 99 .99999 % of all of humanity

So that that's not that big a deal Almost everybody we know anything about is because of some kind of written record that has come down to us normally

If in a fragmentary form in on papyri, whatever else it might be so What he is claimed to have written is our primary evidence of his existence

Problem is isn't none of that gives us a date It doesn't say on the day of our

Lord la la la la la because that's not how people did stuff back then so When we look at the manuscripts when you actually look at the manuscripts that we possess

That contain all of say the seven epistles something like that. You're talking the middle of the 11th century

So you're talking 900 years down the road before we have A Full manuscripts and then we have references to a nation.

We have we have older ones in Syriac and so forth as well Yeah, yeah, they're fragmentary and things like that, but as far as the whole thing

You're talking 900 years down the road, which again is not unusual that that's that's And then a lot of people go.

Well, I want something earlier. Well, welcome to history But even when we get there

Oh They all say in the same things and so we've we've talked about the recensions.

Why don't you why don't you give us a quick? overview of How it's been broken down because I gotta admit, you know when

I imagine when these things first started coming to light It was like man, how do we even

We even lay this stuff out. It had to have been quite a challenge for people to do.

Oh, absolutely I mean that that's that's something that's been a challenge ever since they started getting published and again, we have manuscripts that are from the medieval era and things like this, but it really wasn't and it really didn't enter the conversational world until about the 16th century when these things started coming coming to publish and coming to a more public idea actually,

John Calvin actually refers to this in the Institutes and Addresses it and and it's one of these quotations that people say, you know

Oh, you know, he's he's super critical about this and stuff and you got to remember that in John Calvin's day the only things getting published are forgeries and long recensions

So this is these are things that everyone today rejects and we'll talk about the rich ascensions here in just a second, but To realize how late it is in history when these things are getting published and then we had to go and work backwards and try to recreate all this in the midst of a whole tangle of forgeries and Interpolations and now we have recensions and all this kind of stuff

So well now before before you go to the recensions Let me just let me make sure people understand what you're just saying because it we don't want anybody going

Oh, you're just picking on Rome the Reformation takes place

Only a matter of decades After the publication of Lorenzo Valla's work on Jerome that began to Disassemble the anachronism that had existed for centuries and centuries and centuries and People are now starting to recognize

There's a lot of this stuff in Gratian's Decretum that are it's just it's all forgeries

And these people didn't write these things there's no evidence they wrote these things these these quotes only appear over the past couple hundred years or they contain all sorts of stuff that Could not have possibly been in existence back then donation of Constantine suit is during the credals

Most people just don't have any homilies. I mean, that's not even until the 16th and 17th centuries

Oh, yeah, and so they have their influence you know for for 1 ,500 years as as something from well for whenever they were made whether second third fourth century or whatever and they had their

Influence along through church history and much like you say with the donation of Constantine, you know

We can see in in multiple papal decrees how how much of a foundation it was used and then when

Vala Proved the donation to Constantine to be I mean beyond any shadow of a doubt from a far later period and then therefore completely forged

Everything that was built on top of that Was just kind of hanging up there and it doesn't collapse or fall down and it

Happened in the middle of the Renaissance that happened in the middle of the Reformation. And so now you get multiple challenges and you know

It's it's quite a thing to witness when that when that happens in history Well, what's the amazing thing to witness is is when you really realize between the donation of Constantine the

Pseudo -Isidore and decretals and everything else The papacy was built on a pile of false statements that have been washed away even

Rome Admits they've been washed away, but the papacy still stands there With this foundation completely completely gone and and people don't even think about it.

It's it's It is amazing and so that again for most let's say non non

Catholics that are they're looking at this they need to need to recognize it was a challenging time period and forgeries have been

Forgeries are discussed by the early church fathers in their genuine stuff Because they existed at that time and people knew they exist at that time

So they the pseudo -ignatian materials, like I said the watchtower used that Anybody with a big name

Pseudo Milito, you know Milito Sardis So you but and that's that's actually amazing because he was sort of on the outs because the quarter -decimal controversy

But still there was pseudo Milito pseudo Athanasius And I don't know how many citations

Attributed to Augustine that Augustine never said That if are floating all over the place

So it's been a major major part and to ignore that or to pretend it doesn't exist is is very very dangerous, so all right, oh

Halfway and and and we haven't gotten to the recensions yet. So let's let's let me let me kind of lay it out

It's fast as I can Okay So what what comes down to us from Lightfoot the way he put this forward as a model is that there are?

Three recensions, right? and so for those of you who are not familiar with this recensions means essentially a collection of letters and so for Ignatius is an early figure in church history that wrote letters on his way to martyrdom that that is an

I think an indisputable reality and What comes down to us through history is not just his letters but his letters and a whole bunch of other stuff and All of its ascribed to him as the

Bishop of Antioch in the early 2nd century and so you have three main recensions that are described and that is

As it was originally the short Greek which is now known as the middle recension

And so that would be if you go look up on Wikipedia or something like that and you say, you know

I want to see the you know, what letters did Ignatius write and it says well, there's seven epistles middle recension

It is the standard one that is it is the consensus view since since the days of Lightfoot So late 1800s that these represent the authentic letters of Ignatius from the early 2nd century

Okay, there is a long recension Which is when we say words like interpolated that just means additions things added to the letters

They are longer in some situations. Some of them actually have shorter chapters and remove some stuff, which is really weird and then in addition to Those longer versions of those seven letters.

There's an additional several letters on top of that in the long recension and then there's additional medieval ones that are

Laughable things like the one from the one from Trump Almost as bad to the

Virgin Mary and we you know a letter from the Virgin Mary back to him, you know because that That totally happened So things like that were really easy to deduce right because that's nonsense

But as we start peeling away One of the one of the challenges that happened is while this discussion is going on again

There was in the early 1800s. There was a large growing consensus that okay this this

Shortest Greek that we have these seven letters are the authentic ones and then all of a sudden a guy named

William Curitan messed up everything By making discovery in a monastery of a three -letter recension in the

Syriac so a whole nother language and This one is complete and this one even self -referentiates that these are the three letters of Ignatius and then ends it and that just threw everyone's minds, you know for a tizzy and Even Lightfoot for the first 10 -20 years if I recall correctly

Was supportive of Curitan's thesis that this is actually more likely to be the originals a shorter version of it

We have all sorts of historical Precedent for people expanding Ignatius's letters. We really don't have any historical precedent for them shortening them.

And so Initially Curitan's thesis actually took hold very strongly and then

Lightfoot came back and kind of 180'd that Made a critical version or an eclectic version of the middle recension, which most people don't realize

The middle recension that most of us will read is not the middle recension in the manuscripts. It is something that Lightfoot put together

Without in some instances even footnoting when he took from the Latin or took from the long recension in a couple of instances to piece together a smoothed out middle recension that For a hundred and fifty years has gone to be the standard now.

There's nothing wrong with eclectic texts I think there's something wrong with eclectic texts that don't have apparatuses on the bottom that can actually

Tell us what's going on in the manuscript tradition There's actually a movement right now.

I was I was just watching Somebody who is as as working on their dissertation.

Actually, they just finished the dissertation On Ignatian epistles and so forth and they are one of their first things that they're aiming to do is to establish an exhaustive

Critical apparatus for Ignatius's letters. That's how complicated the manuscript tradition is. So All that to say what

Lightfoot told us essentially is that there's a short recension which has the three letters the middle recension which has the seven in Greek and then the long recension which has the depending on how you

Divvy divvy it all out the 12 or the 13 letters And and everyone agrees and I do too

I don't even think there's anyone seriously in the world that is Arguing for the long recension anymore.

That one has gone by the wayside significantly the middle recension is really the focus of a lot of the most recent stuff going on and the short recension has also made a comeback of maybe this can help us solve some of the

Issues that we are starting to realize so for a hundred and twenty some -odd years the middle recension has played a

Foregone conclusion as the authentics after Lightfoot and that that really just kind of tells you more about Lightfoot really than it does about the middle recension

His influence was magnificent. I mean you you held up here your version of Lightfoot's treatment of this

It is it is imposing and I think that's Yeah, the level of scholarship is

Astonishing. I think you and I both ran into this the the barrier of entry to Ignatian studies is is a great wall of China It's amazingly huge And then once you get into it you find out that that's just the wall surrounding a mountain

And it just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. That's why I find those I forget I'm done then you pull me back into this and so I it's

So that's just the basic recension structure. Well Since you mentioned 97 98

Reinhard Huebner's work in the late 90s was was meant to initially challenge this and then

There was a whole bunch of answers back to him and trying to you know, deal with that and so forth But again time kind of shows us something there had there have been people over the past hundred and fifty years that have

Raised this question here and that question there But it usually dies out in ten years.

It's usually one or two Scholars here that raise an issue on this point or that point this one's not dying out the past 25 years has seen a pretty significant upsurge in this type of challenge and They're not coming from You know atheists and stuff, which is what

I keep hearing on on X and so forth. And yeah Is a lot of it German, yes, but a lot of it's also

English and a lot of it's also is attempting to address some of the problems that we see going on because in the 20th century our knowledge of the 2nd century has grown by Leaps and bounds

I kind of I kind of apply a metaphor of it coming more into focus we're getting a much more a

Much more detailed view of history and it's making a lot of the issues that were present in the 1800s a little bit more significant now

Even Lightfoot admitted that the classic dating of of Ignatius is is a little bit hairy

Parts let's talk about that for a second because I think that that's really important for most folks again, especially apologetically speaking

Is You know, why are we all concerned about this well the earliest date 107 108 for his martyrdom.

Yep. There's a lot of 115 out there as well But Where are we getting this from because we don't we don't have there's nothing in the epistles themselves that just you know

Jumps out and says this person was governor here and therefore you've got this, you know, there are some names of bishops in The what are called the genuine epistles that's really a misleading way of using the terminology

But anyway, the generally accepted there are some names of some bishops that are mentioned there

But we don't know when they lived either so that doesn't really nail things down But there's there is a major issue if it's 108

Or it's 180 Okay for some things

Let's say both of those are in the second century, okay, so for some things

That wouldn't make all that big of a difference because we're still talking about second century Christianity This was present this demonstrates that that's fine but for other things it's extremely important because as you know, one of the key arguments is

He writes to the church at Rome Doesn't mention the Bishop of Rome Okay, right

You put that together with other studies that have seen the rise of the monarchical Episcopate in Rome a single bishop in around 140 if he's before 140 then that that makes sense if he's after 140 that doesn't make any sense.

So so the dating is As you said rather rather hairy one way or one way or the other and The real the real issue is how much of this is tradition?

How much is it? Well, this is what I read Therefore I accept that and how much of it can actually be backed up with you know

So sound arguments, I'm I'm kind of weird in this world Because I actually think one of the one of the more solid dates that we have

Regarding Ignatius or one of the more solid facts we have about him is actually when he died That that's the crazy part about this is not just Eusebius We have multiple things that I think do point to the authenticity of Ignatius During the reign of Trajan.

In fact, there is universal and as much as my earlier days I was I was really struggling with the the

Trajanic reign for his death It's either there or we have really massive problems, right?

Because because we have we have references from origin placing him as As the second bishop in Antioch, which if you extend the second bishop of Antioch to you know, 180

That's that's you know, that doesn't make any sense Right if you if you if you are and and we have

Eusebius with no uncertain terms placing him during Trajan's reign actually down to the year and so a lot of this really

Comes down to how is it that we date these things? How is it we we understand them and most of them as you say are relatively dated.

They are dated to some other Thing that occurs somewhere and then we try to see which one occurs and we can see what order it is

We can kind of see how close they are. But you know if if for instance Polycarp's references to Ignatius Seemed to be written like a couple years afterwards because he's still unaware of Ignatius's, you know death and all this kind of stuff

So that places him super early into the one teens But if we place that letter of Ignatius of polycarp, you know in the 140s

Then that that almost insists that Ignatius joins him up there, right? So and there's complications with polycarps letter

I don't even want to get into but All of that to say is yeah, a lot of the dating of this stuff is based on sometimes hearsay

Sometimes it is based on relative dating of other things around but it is not simple and and to just to just establish

You know 107 108 end of story seven letter recension of the short Greek that I mean okay but we still have problems that we have to solve and that that kind of is where my

My trek into all of this began is I wanted to know what are the problems right and you know

That's where most people are. That's that's what you're gonna find the books. That's the dating you're gonna be given, right?

but again and Eusebius you know, we thank we thank

God for Eusebius a wonderful resource everything else, but He didn't do history the way we do history today

Which means that you know his uses of sources at times are is, you know makes us go.

Hmm. Not so sure about that and you know, so Those are realities that we have to live with That doesn't mean that everything he said was wrong.

That doesn't mean Ignatius didn't exist It's just that the tendency for a lot of folks is to in fact,

I I've certainly seen it over the past week On the internet if if you dare to even go, you know, we might want to have a conversation about that chart

I was just showing you where you've got all sorts of different things going on here and people are freaking out

They're losing their minds You sent me a link and I followed I did some more clicking around all these websites you you made reference to we chuckled but that there is a

Allegedly a correspondence between Ignatius and the Virgin Mary, right and There are there are a bunch of websites just want to make sure everyone understands complete forgery neither of us holds to that Yes, you have to mention that some people

But there are a bunch of websites that that go. Well, this is a part of the tradition

That wonderful nebulous term the tradition you exactly on on my

Core frustration in teaching on this stuff is that it's it's not really the church history professors that are saying stuff like that Right, it's it's it's just in it's in the air

It's in the zeitgeist and and you know, you have this reference here and say well there is a tradition I can't tell you how many truckloads of insanity

I have seen with that follows the phrase Edition and I I ran into this in in dealing with some

Eastern Orthodox guys not to expand this conversation out further than that But you know with with for instance

Thecla in the first century this right mythical character that absolutely did not exist

I'm sorry, I'll fight it, but that has been made a saint and therefore has to exist Has been made is supposed to loss.

Yes equal to the Apostles in the in the Eastern tradition and We we have we have direct

Contemporary witness to the fact that the guy who wrote it was a presbyter who lost his post

Because he made up a story about this, you know, I mean, it's just It was written

I I think with pious intention but then people took it as history and that that's that Frustration now even to this day you will find you will find her, you know

Venerated there prayed to where these prayers going, you know I mean just like that that kind of that kind of the it's the popular level of Misunderstanding that I'm trying to help people understand.

I'm not trying to make a church history Class or episodes for you know, no offense for you

I'm trying to introduce people to history as I said when I started out this second series

I said I want to teach this series how I wish I learned it which is tell me when there's difficulties

Don't just smooth over the story so that you can do this and pretend that you know All Christians throughout the first 250 years were everywhere in the

Roman Empire persecuted in an every year That's that's nonsense, right? But that's the impression

I got, you know, the first time I went through church history my undergraduate back 20 years ago or about 23 years ago boy, the years just keep ticking don't they and So it was it was this it was that kind of that that that appealed to Smoothing things over and I was like, you know, if I'm gonna go through this,

I'm not smoothing nothing over I want you to see the difficulty. I want you to see how much work goes into this stuff

You know when we walk through it and so when we when we assess something like Ignatius and we address the middle recension

The middle recension is perhaps one of the most complicated things because Again, when you when you look to the manuscript tradition, you actually try to start peeling away the the layers of this onion

You you quickly realize wait a second The story of these three recensions that comes down on the popular level

Almost makes it sound like there's three books that are just copied and copied and copied throughout history

One is the short one is the middle one is the long and they come down to us completely separate not mixed together at all

No problems, and we just have to identify which of these three completely unique books is authentically from Ignatius and it's like It's not like that at all.

No, it is so mixed up In fact, I I was I was I was watching this guy who was it was presenting on the manuscript tradition on this it's a

Doctor that was that was working on this and he says look. Did you you have to understand how? Complicated this is so for the middle recension itself, for instance

There is not a single manuscript that has all seven letters of the middle recension together by themselves

Just as we put it until the 17th century That's that's crazy late,

I mean that's that's almost modern era and and Because you know because Ignatius is

Romans it has its own strange history and then you know You bring in things like the

Coptic, you know, which which you know messes up our understanding all together Anyway, you have multiple middle recension ones mixed with long recension ones and then you have the order all messed up because the order in some of these is really really hard and fast and Another thing that people need to understand since there are fully acknowledged pseudo

Ignatian materials, right that means somebody Somebody pretty early on was willing to add

Modify forge whatever and it's difficult to especially because of What happened in the history of the

Roman Empire and especially in the West? it's it's difficult to know exactly when this was taking place and when the earliest appearance of the

Pseudo Ignatian materials appears, but somebody's already playing with the letters. Okay.

Somebody's already doing that and So if you if you start with the short

Which is and let's say you use the Syriac because I mean that is The language around Antioch at that point in time that that makes perfect sense a

Greek would have been great You know, you've got the Roman Empire running around. So, you know Greeks obviously being

Utilized in that way too but if you start with the the shorter stuff then you've got to explain the

Origination of everything else that comes afterward because if you're saying all we actually have from Ignatius are these three letters

Then where did all the rest of them come from including? the additions to and expansions on or interpolations of or editing of places where they are

Saying this is the letter to the Romans or this is a letter to You know anyplace else what how do you

It gets incredibly complicated. And how do you at least when we're when we're dealing with the

New Testament? We have certain You know shorter reading is to be preferred as a general canon in New Testament Criticism though, it very often doesn't end up working that way, but you can't do that Necessarily with entire books.

No, that doesn't necessarily follow along And so who was doing this why what were their purposes?

Some of the articles that you'd that you aimed me at, you know I was reading through and it was talking about well, you know, it seems like This particular letter is interacting with second sophistic stuff from the second century and okay now you're assuming that Ignatius would have encountered things like that or Or or that that helps us because I mean honestly the second sophistic and that was one of the arguments

I just did not Yeah, anyway, yeah, that's the kind of thing. Sophistic is huge.

I mean it spans well into the first century and well past that and so Trying to identify that with with movements inside second sophistic.

I think was not a case well made but yeah, but it's It's out there and so that kind of argument

That uses well there, you know, and there's some of the articles use analysis of vocabulary

To try to divide up letters saying well, you know this this letter uses this particular kind of terminology

This letter uses this type. That's the exact same argumentation that is used to fracture the

Pauline corpus to separate the pastoral epistles out from from the more

Larger epistles in the New Testament, and I really struggle with stuff like that because I've said many times if I you know

Bart Ehrman does that if I if I could compare Bart Ehrman's published work works With his emails

I could demonstrate somebody else wrote one of the two Because you see they're using different different vocabulary and and that's because you use different vocabulary when you're talking to different people

I use a completely different realm of vocabulary Right now talking to you about Ignatius and I do talking to my cats

Okay, you know Very very good and and and well said as I said

Or or rich I'm not gonna say which one's closer to the cats at that point, but I'm relieved that he

He's he has to throw that stuff in from behind the glass. There's no glass in here so I could hear it much more easily

So I'd mention everybody There's all sorts of this kind of stuff that comes in But and I agree with you and each of those each of those arguments.

I do not I do not hold to at all now as far as for the as far as for the linguistic arguments of You know types of particles used this and that I that's so far beyond me.

I have no earthly idea I'm not honestly interested nor do I have to be But some of the some of the arguments that I was starting to starting to go and hot that's that's more in line with what

I know about the second century later than earlier and and for me it was more of trying to lay out the entirety of the second century and Placing and and and I and this just kind of big picture.

I think insisting that the middle recension Happened in one set 107 the way it is that kind of classic thing you and I both heard in in seminary and Forcing that to say that has led to this tension the more we've learned in second century

With regards to the development of the monarchical episcopate with with the even with the increasing knowledge of Valentinian Gnosticism it the expansion of familiarity with these things and then we start to see references in the middle and this is what some have pointed out and I think with with decent argumentation that there are much stronger forms of docetism in Ignatius's mind in the middle recension

Then was present in the world in 107. So just from just from those types of Pressures and again people disagree on this that's fine

We're talking about nineteen hundred year old letters who really cares, but we're all nerds So we kind of do and so from my perspective some of these things including including difficulties like like Polycarp, for instance when he's describing the type of governance that's in his church

He's not talking about something that even resembles anything Ignatius is saying These types of things have been pointed out before he refers to still presbyters and deacons in this way and and But if you read the middle recension of Ignatius this this constant drumbeat of using almost every opportunity to to defeat some form of Gnosticism Proto -Gnosticism or docetic beliefs on various points whether using the

Eucharist or whether using the incarnation or describing You know the the resurrection of Jesus Christ these types of things

Almost all of them make a little bit more sense further on in the second century When you say further on what are you talking about say that again when you say further on what are you thinking of?

so there's this is kind of the split of the of the scholarship that's working on on Challenging this right now as some say that Ignatius himself must have lived just like a couple decades later wrote all of these and then that solves most of the issues and So there's there's some who hold that that Ignatius You know wrote the middle recension as is the you know, the scholarly consensus and whatnot but that he seems to be interacting with those with kind of ideas that are more endemic to about the 140s and this this is kind of this whole area of trying to Trying to fit the seven -letter recension still in Ignatius's own

Backyard still from his hand as far as for the middle recension is concerned and there's those who will argue that but then there's those who?

Separate out the middle recension from Ignatius and this has been I think one one of the things that frustrates some people more is having a discussion on that level, especially if you're dealing with a

Catholic on this which you know, I think I think a Certain level of of just straight -up honesty needs to be had

I mean the the current Catholic catechism quotes the middle recension as sacred tradition and so interacting with a

Catholic and it's you know, and pretending that we can have a unbiased conversation is Dicey from the start but regardless of such that that idea that the middle recension has some characteristics, especially the strength of the

Episcopate pushes it mid to late 2nd century and And even even certain references to Valentinian narcissism.

I don't know how it granular we want to get with that but I Watched I watched

I went and read some of the responses that have been being done for more the consensus side of things and and saying

This and saying look this is explained away by okay Maybe that maybe that paragraph is an interpolation, but the seven -letter recension is still good.

It's like well now There's no text. Yeah, exactly I was like, wait a second now, how can you trust anything if we can just identify that is coming, you know

Say 170 180 is like well, okay, so that has a pretty good grounding but that all that does is prove that maybe that paragraph is from then it's like, uh,

There's no manuscript history that has that missing from that recension How do you rebuild that?

How do you do anything with this then because then that makes almost everything that backs up later ideas called into question almost immediately

And so I I'm kind of swirling around with all this stuff just going like how do you make heads or tails out of this?

Because I've always had a bit of a conniption with with Ignatius not because what he says

But because of how difficult these recensions are to figure out and and to settle down on One of the one of the suggestions that I have and it's it is simply my suggestion

I am NOT an Ignatian scholar. I want to say this over and over and over again because I know there's gonna be clipped and cut and Laid out to dry and well and mainly done by non

Ignatian scholars themselves. Yes, all of a sudden everybody's Let's put it this way if two weeks ago you weren't reading about Ignatius if you were not reading about Ignatius two weeks ago

I'm not interested in your opinion right now That's exactly what I was about to say is if you figure out what the world is going on in this

If you didn't know what the recensions were two weeks ago. Shut up We're not interested in what you have to say

You could have been reading non -stop for 14 days and you are not you you have barely scratched the surface.

So yeah Yeah, all all this to say is When I take in everything that I read and then finally gave up I'm like after seven months.

I just I can't do it anymore I Have heard good enough arguments for me to say

I can I can Safely say I think that the that the shortest recension the the the

Syriac is Closest to what we originally had Now there there's a theory that there was originally seven of those but we have no textual evidence of that.

So yeah I we really can't do that But that what we have there is a much

Closer version to what was original now, does that solve all the problems? It doesn't solve all of them, but it does solve most of them, especially with regards to moving the date later

His his his his References in the shortest recension in the short recension to the

Episcopate fit the early 2nd century. They just do His his his structure of argumentation

What he dealt deals with and how he talks about it These these things and still even keeping references to someone like Onesimus Which if we assume is the same

Onesimus from Philemon also anchors him Fairly early in the 2nd century right when

Eusebius said he was Pretty much right as we can assume origin assumed. He was as the second bishop of Antioch I it's it's it's hard to remove him from Trajan's reign because that's a pretty universal expression

And irony is being familiar with him is a little bit weirder of a thing But one of the things I started early on I was just like, you know what

I'm gonna do I'm gonna go find quotations from other church fathers of Ignatius and then I'm gonna find out which recension because at the beginning

I was Like well, that's a quick one because you know if Eusebius just has the middle recension and and you know a

Text that is unique to the middle recension is quoted before him. Boom, you know, great. No problem. And Then I said, you know, it's like okay.

Well polycarp references him. Okay, but he doesn't quote from him Okay, he just says he wrote letters. Okay, that's plural and that doesn't really help

And then you go to Irenaeus who doesn't name Ignatius, but he quotes him verbatim and I was like, oh sweet that's like 180

That's great And then come to find out the quotation he gives is both in the short middle and long and of course it is

And then I go. All right. Well Let's go. Let's go see who else does and do you have any idea how long it took me to dig up the quotations?

That else wise it was just two of them in origin Thankfully, I have multiple copies of the

Church Fathers and in PDF form and can search on Google Drive with OCR and everything and ended up finding the two of them and then

I found out that Eusebius actually footnotes them which really drove me crazy, but anyway It was by the way, believe it or not grok does a decent job with it, too

Oh, was he able to I tried to find it that way Rock three grok three is a huge improvement over grok two

Okay, never mind See see right there. There's a there's an advancement right there.

That's Far as for finding sources my goodness some of the more recent stuff is awesome

But I found I found origin Preface to the Song of Songs and then what was it homily six on the

Gospel of Luke a quotes Ignatius twice And then he names him and calls him the second bishop of Antioch who was martyred in Rome by the wild beasts

And it's like, oh, okay. All right. All right, you know, I'm that's early third century a lot of this makes sense so his timing

I Want to keep Ignatius in the earliest parts of the second century Because that's all the references

But the middle recension just does not fit cleanly there So either it had been interpolated fairly quickly

And added to fairly quickly and that's what some of the people were arguing Well, maybe that paragraph was over that paragraph was which then, you know destroys any conversation about what

Ignatius the man actually wrote and So what makes the most sense to me is not that the short recension of the classic explanation is that it's an abridgement done later on of The middle recension which

To me has always been a problematic explanation to begin with that. That's a bizarre thing if true, okay, but The the instances of this make a little bit more sense if the original is shorter and it is expanded by the end of the second century and That's what

I think the middle recension is from and so this this kind of goes to the bigger question and even what you were Dealing with when you were talking at the at the cross -examination in your debate, right because these

Those quotations in the middle recension. I think all have a home in the second century I think I think all seven of the middle recension belong towards the

Mid to late part of the second century that makes perfect sense And so all those references the medicine of immortality and all that kind of stuff.

It makes sense towards the end of the second century If we want to say oh We are a hundred percent sure or even 95 percent sure that this came from Ignatius and 107 on his way to Rome some of some of that doesn't sound as Couth in in my in my appreciation for it.

So What that was what I finally ended up with and you know, I'm open to all sorts of correction

But I'm not spending any more time on this only to say and my intention in the whole point was to draw attention to the complexity of the debate because Because most of us were taught a very simplistic

Lightfootian Concept of this without any footnotes I think that's one of the things you said on the dividing line back last week was

I never had an asterisk Next to Ignatius, right? You should you should there should be something there to just realize this is a much deeper well

Than we think so at the end of the day I think the short recension and the middle recension both come from the second century

I think his stuff was interpolated a lot earlier in history than people say it was the long recension

I think clearly comes fourth and fifth century, but let me let me throw a Thought that actually just occurred to me and see what to think about it.

We've got three letters In Syriac, we have a

Syriac version We have the seven a translation of Greek. Yeah, right but that's that's popular in The area around Antioch.

I mean, that's that's that's a language. It's alive at that time. So, you know, why else would it be there? There was a

Practice in the ancient world that this has come up with a lot in discussions of what's called the

Ausgang text there was a practice in the ancient world of Making one copy of a letter that you're actually going to be sending via messenger to a church and a second copy of the letter that you would be keeping for your own purposes because you didn't have

You know carbon paper would have been great, but I'm not sure it works too well with papyri and You know heavy hand to write with yeah, really heavy hand you got the

CC, you know doesn't really work too well back then what if What we have is

There are Seven letters that were sent those were sent in Greek to the recipients because they would be in Primarily non

Syriac speaking places now and the Syriac were the personal copies only some of which made it back to Antioch from anybody who accompanied polycarp or or anything along those lines and the differences are due to Translation.

I mean, you know Maybe they were originally written in Greek and then they're translated back in the

Syriac or initially, you know in some some way Because he is

According to the story he's moving, you know He's he's going from place to place on the way to Rome which in of itself is an interesting story that has some

Questions behind it as well. I mean, right why would you drag someone all the way from Antioch to Rome?

That's some of the harder questions of that only exists in the middle recension By the way, the shorter recension has a much more simplified story of that.

But yes, go on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, too And of course you've got to add, you know, put that little theory aside what you just said is

We all know that there were tremendous expansions of Martyrologies at this time in church history

I mean and and I think I think from our perspective the way we view history and Kind of respect for primary documents and so forth.

We think we hear forgery. We hear interpolations. We automatically assume nefarious intent Sometimes yes, but oftentimes it was an homage

Oftentimes it was it was even the whole story with Thecla actually came out of a guy who had great respect for Paul and wanted to wanted to appreciate his memory by Expanding the story and and the narrative around his life.

And so the acts of Paul and Thecla, right and I Do not believe

The the writers of the middle recension if that is an expansion of the shorter

I don't believe they had nefarious intent. I Think they wanted to defend orthodoxy.

I think they wanted to defeat probably in somewhat desperation The the constantly increasing threat of Gnosticism in the late second century

As well as one of the main ways to defeat that we know from our Anais's against heresies is an appeal to the

Episcopal office going all the way back to the beginning. That's fine. And so almost all of those things are massive qualities of the middle recension and They are very very muted qualities in the shorter recension or in the short recension

So yeah, most most most people reading church history do not appreciate The massive threat that Gnosticism was both in its original form as well and Valentinian Gnosticism in my opinion is just a

Satanic counterfeit. I mean it's it's meant to try to counterfeit the

Christian faith specifically and there were forms of Gnosticism that existed before that that that don't try to do that, but yeah most people

Thrown around like a like a Baseball bat today Right.

Everybody's a Gnostic if they have slightly dualistic concepts and like that, but the actual historical

Gnosticism was a Desperate threat against the early church very and it seems

I don't think nefarious. I think I think they were truly trying to use this If so,

I think they were trying to use this as a way to protect the church and I think with good intention I really do And and so if if my theory is correct and again, who knows but Whatever is happening with these interpolations or whatnot.

I think in the majority of them in the middle recension or whatnot Are are with good intention and a desire to protect the

Christian faith I think so and if it is that early on though, I would I would have to throw in the possibility or at least the

Idea that This was done within his circles if you know what

I mean, in other words by By people who knew him or were at the church at Antioch or something like that The idea of people outside of his circles that early on I mean a century later guys been gone

Okay, that's one thing I would at least feel a little more comfortable with the with the expansion of things if in fact

It was done by people who were going I knew the man and this is what he would have said Yeah, something right something along those lines would be it would be nice Um, we've got a long time

But let me let me talk a little bit about and and rich, you know Rich is much older than I am and so it's hard for him to stand this long and he's pacing around back there

I'm sure the arthritis is kicking in and things like that. Um, oh He's oh

Well, I haven't I haven't see he's so excited Because this board here and I know you want one of these boards you really do

Everyone wants this board, but he just today got it to where I can now control

My computer from the board now it it does that with Windows but Mac was like no, we're not gonna do that Well now now it is and so he's very very excited, but I haven't used it

I've got this great quote from from from trolley ins up here That we didn't we didn't get to I it's one of my favorite

Ignatius quotes Stop your ears Therefore when anyone speaks to you that stands apart from Jesus Christ from David's Sion and Mary's son

Who was really born and ate and drank really persecuted by Pontius Pilate really crucified and died while heaven and earth and the underworld looked on Who also really rose from the dead since his father raised him up his father who likewise raised us also who believe in him

Eugeus Christ apart from whom we have no real life and the really really really is over against the

Inappearance and appearance and appearance that you know from the opposition. It's great stuff.

I you know No one's arguing about how how beautiful this is how wonderful it is, but let's talk for a second

About why you can't even talk about these things. It's almost like Uh, you mentioned the quotation in the

Universal Catholic Catechism of Ignatius, you know, there are their answer is gonna be yeah But that's not infallible and the

Pope didn't say I define proclaim blah blah all races. We know how that works

Roman Catholic Church Authority is only relevant when it's not been proven wrong by somebody else in the

Roman Catholic Church, so I get that but It just amazed me

If you if you say That there are there's scholarship that is questioning dating and it created incredibly complex

Transmission of the text over time and everything else People lose their minds.

It's it's it's almost like how dare you that the almost emotional connection and yet I can't believe most of these folks have ever even read all of Ignatius to begin with it

It just doesn't make any sense to me. Well, I think what I keep running into is is people that have pulled their hope from having chosen the right church rather than right

Savior and And this is a threat to the church that they chose

I ran into the same thing with Fecla and Eastern Orthodox and and any delving into you

Into history of it or anything like this any challenge to what is currently accepted by the church is a rejection of the church for them

That is akin to someone coming up to you and saying Jesus didn't rise from the dead So and I'm not saying that's across the board for all

Catholics or anything like that I'm just saying from those who have been interacting with me about this or sending me direct messages or whatever the case may be

Look, I just want to know what Ignatius put down on paper. That's what I want to know That's what

I'm curious about. I love history. I love this stuff and it doesn't hold any threat to me

Ignatius could come out and and say I believe the mass of the Catholic Church in 2025 is the legitimate thing like that doesn't that doesn't change my understanding of Scripture Right because I do not see somebody like Ignatius as some infallible rule of faith or guidance

I see that as in the scripture and so but if tradition is capital

T then Ignatius is big tradition big He's early.

He's influential. Well, not until after Eusebius talks about him. He's actually not influential before that, which is weird and and then beyond that he becomes enormously influential in the fourth and fifth century and beyond and And now is the center post of all sorts of Theories that are making him say things that he's not saying and you know all sorts of stuff

So I understand why people who have placed their hope into a single

Institutional church get threatened by this because this is one of the foundation stones of that institutional church

And so if we if we start talking recensions or if we start talking anything or even hit that somebody somewhere

In the most extreme says the the the question of Ignatius is so complicated that I don't think he even existed anymore

Somebody has actually made that argument and said all of these are Pseudonymous, all of them are pseudepigraphal.

I do not agree with that. I think I think actually the very existence of forgeries

Proves the existence of an influential martyr and bishop in the early 2nd century Yeah, why would anybody put his name on something if no one ever heard exactly so But there are people that were made up in the early church to correct correct that cloth for instance

But usually not within as you pointed out one or two generations. Usually that's like 150 years removed, right?

Right. Yeah, you want to have enough distance to get your lie in there without somebody immediately There's his grandson that says you're you're an idiot.

Yeah, if I'm making someone up right now I'm not making someone up as a you know, Vietnam vet. I'm making someone up that you know is a

Civil War veteran, right? Exactly, exactly. Yeah, that that's exactly right. All right So is there anything else you wanted to you had on the list that you wanted to make sure people understood about?

Why there is a question about these things Look, I think people should not

When you mentioned the guy who's finished his dissertation and he wants to a critical edition I'm assuming that's the guy you sent

I saw some video from him a very very, you know, erudite lots of lots of Graphics and and charts and you know

British guy, right? Yeah Yeah, I don't want to really say his name because I don't want to drag more people into right exactly

Yeah, let him let him do his stuff. But you said but I would love to have an accessible critical edition

Of All the apostolic fathers but Ignatius especially because of those those big

I'd love to have it to where here's the short Here's the medium. Here's the long.

Here's the manuscripts. Here's the variant readings See how they parallel see what's in each one of them

What isn't in each one of them what's in two and not in one that would be just incredibly

Valuable to have and this is this is one of the wonderful things that that I think this this this being the first like Real challenge to the light foot

Ian hypothesis that has gotten traction. This is one of the great side effects we may actually see that because a critical apparatus of Ignatius of the pistols because there was no reason for it because the light foot answered all of our questions and Then he didn't give us weirdly enough any footnotes with that of meaningful value.

And so To actually have a full critical apparatus. Yeah, I think we're gonna you people will start to see just how complicated it really really is there's

Actually in the full edition of light foot here The problem is this is next to impossible to access because it's almost all

There's a whole section on manuscripts and versions and there's a whole section on Quotations and references

Various dates going all the way into the you know, here's from AD 975 and and Right Arabic and it's in all sorts of different languages that most of us can't access

The hat if we could get that electronically, yep that you know, we're getting spoiled but I can sit here and and and Click on stuff in in the

Greek up here and it's gonna pop stuff up and references and cross references and that's that's what I'm Hoping for and I don't want to be discouraging anyone from Reading Ignatius You know,

I've had all these people Ignatius convert me to Catholicism. I'm like really to tell Francis that Yeah, right, okay,

I'm sorry A couple years ago. What was that that that little cheems meme?

What was something like? Well, he said Eucharist guess it's time to become. Yes. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

I saw that one again recently Yeah, he said Eucharist therefore. It must be a better Roman Catholic. Yeah You know

What one of the classes I enjoyed teaching most when I taught for Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary was development of patristic theology and Going through Ignatius.

That was just that sparked so much great Conversation it it did allow us to talk about early forms of Gnosticism and things like that Which you know, we could have a conversation as to when that all developed

But but I would encourage people to read You know Clement of Rome and make sure you get the right

Clement of Rome unlike Leighton Flowers who quoted the wrong Clement to me actually, in fact

Did you know that on our Romans in our Romans 9 debate Leighton Flowers quoted Pseudo -clementine materials to me as if it was from the first century.

So it still happens very very often unfortunately And to the uninitiated it it's a very easy mistake to make and and I keep seeing it with the

Ignatius stuff Even just now, you know because people will just go out and pull something because they don't

I mean It's again a huge barrier to entry on any of these guys he's using language we don't use in my

Baptist Church Therefore well, that doesn't that really doesn't accomplish a whole lot. I wish people read more.

I had some guy Just yesterday on Twitter say isn't it amazing that all of these?

Apostolic Fathers were Roman Catholic and so I I took the translation I did of The epistle to Diognetus and the whole section on the the

Great Exchange on justification and it's a beautiful amazing letter I love I love it.

Love it. I wish it was complete If I'll ruin your evening, but yeah

Ponder ponder one of the questions I've had Love the letter it is incomplete.

So maybe it was in the section. We don't have but You know what's missing from that letter?

Resurrection Not a single reference to it And it makes me go. Hmm I wonder now,

I mean you can't make sense out of really the atonement section if there isn't a resurrection

I suppose, you know, but you can't but he couldn't have been assuming that a pagan would make those connections

So that's but I quoted the section on the Great Exchange Back to him and he said it's great.

But are those your words? And I'm like, you know, no, that's one of those those super early early

Christians talking about We're gonna have to we're gonna have to make a reverse teams meme where oh, no, I read the epistle of Diognetus time to become

Baptist Back and forth and that's I think that's that's the great thing about more information equals better history all the time and And more challenges and I think that's that's one of my challenges to anyone who's watching this looking to make their own videos there is great value in disagreeing with people great value with having differences of opinions and like James I don't even know where you fall on all of this stuff with Ignatius letters or even want to make that clear

I don't care if I disagree with people about nineteen hundred year old letters because These are not the foundation of our faith

That's the scriptures the scriptures are the foundation of our faith and and it does free us up to see and I think

I've heard You say this several times before we have the freedom then to let history be whatever it is

Rather than being forced to find us in history I say this all the time if you are going back to the first or the second to the third of the fourth century and trying to find you

You will be sorely mistaken. None of them Resemble these churches these institutions that exist today because you are not a second century

Christian You're a 21st century Christian or or what you will do is you will force them to become you

So you will start reading them in your language you will let you will anachronistically insert your theology into their theology and that has been my primary criticism of Rome because when

Rome says this is the Consistent teaching of the church for 2 ,000 years and they say that Dogmatically, well guess what you have to do when you read church history now

You that's what you've got to find there and that's the problem that is it is and it's it's a huge problem because I mean

It doesn't even affect how we read the New Testament I when when one of the one of the episodes I made for first century church history was on the the city of Ephesus and its mystical culture and And I argue that to understand the background of Ephesus as a city

My goodness, the book of Ephesians just erupts with meaning and rather than reading it in my context reading it as to how would

They have heard this right and you're just like, oh my goodness and all of a sudden Ephesians 2 1 through 10 is

I You know, I always loved it. But now it is raised to a level that I never saw

What an incredible thing for him to say that we are seated in the heavenlies And I mean that we are far above all of this with what

Christ has done. It's it's amazing I love I love church history. It's why I do this and And if anyone's out there, you know dissuaded by those who mock don't don't be dissuaded study church history learn to love it

These are our brothers and sisters. I always Always teach church history as an extension of fellowship Because we have a responsibility of fellowship in our space and time as well as outside of our space and our time

I remember years ago. There was a Professor at the Old Covenant Seminary in st

Louis that taught church history and his all his lectures used to be online. They may still be

I don't I don't know but I listened to him multiple times and it was interesting.

He would either close the class with a Prayer of Thanksgiving or a prayer of warning depending on whether what had been say that day was

Positive things we can learn from church history or These were mistakes that were made.

Let's not make them again type of a situation and you have to be able to do that you you have to be able to To see that and there's a lot of people especially coming from my background

I Was not taught to love church history as as a child Because in independent fundamentalist

Baptist circles, there was no church history before Billy Graham and Billy Graham was liberal anyways so You didn't you didn't feel like there had to be any connection there.

But at the same time I Have to let them be who they were it is

Disrespectful to them to try to turn them into the image of me and when

I see people doing that, you know I can't therefore do that myself I have to be consistent and that's one of the things that motivated me to try to sneak something into 90 seconds

I shouldn't have snuck into 90 seconds Was I don't want to do to Ignatius What is often done to Ignatius by Roman Catholics to be perfectly honest with you or by Eastern Orthodox or by Protestants?

You know if you're trying to turn Ignatius into a Baptist, you're you're disrespecting It was just as much as as anybody else's so you have to be you have to be consistent along those lines

So I hope people will read them go ahead and read Lightfoot for crying out loud I mean that the world's not going to end if you if you read

Lightfoot That that's fine. He was a tremendous scholar Benefited greatly from so much of what he did there probably wasn't anybody his equal at that time in history to be certain

Go ahead and read them, but just always read with a recognition that they're not inspired

You don't know anything about their context very often You you have misapprehensions about their context and you may be reading things into them that they never intended to communicate as well

And that what has been given to us that is meant To give us all of life and godliness is what's found in scripture

And that's what we need to have is our our ultimate authorities. So Anyways, well, thank you for taking so much time.

You now have the most famous wooden roof in in Central, New York and Built it myself.

I built built you so yeah, let's hang some stuff on it You know, I mean, you know, it might fall off during an earthquake, but I don't think you have to Stay we don't get earthquakes.

We just get blizzards up here. Yes. Well, it would help to insulate too. So there you go So I'll put a poster up of Ignatius, yes, yes

Well, there's lots of icons of Ignatius. Just just don't don't don't kiss it.

Don't bow down to it Go ahead and violate the Seventh Ecumenical Council all you want Yeah, you and I are gonna have to do an episode on the

Nicaea Nicaea to someday. Oh believe you me I'm doing more than an episode I'm doing deep dive on and I see it too because I'm gonna tell you something that is the

Achilles heel There's no honestly, please please Empress Irene.

Oh, yeah high area everything just oh, yeah Please cuz nobody knows that stuff.

Nobody. No, no one's ever heard of Here and no one's ever heard of Frankfurt only a few years later called by Charlemagne What if he had predominated we'd be looking at at second at second

Nicaea as an anti -council We would be rejecting it as just like they rejected the area.

So Now we've left everyone completely confused about what the world we're talking about, which is why Yeah, yeah,

I gotta go take a look at it. So anyways lots of stuff we can do with church history press on I hope you will eventually put your episodes out and you know, just say

Here it is it's incomplete but we got to keep going and and there you go and but I appreciate

I appreciate it even though again, I Will tell people the entire controversy that took place there was pretty much just your fault

Yeah, well, you know what? I'll take credit for dumping all of the research on you and in a single series of direct messages and then

You trying to introduce that in 90 seconds you get to take credit for that one now Yeah, that was pretty dumb.

Nope. That was pretty dumb. No, no two ways about it. So already. Well, it's getting late back where you are

It's what's no, it's only about 730. It's that's not too bad I keep forgetting. I got another hour or two before bed.

Oh, yeah. Yeah Believe you me. That's once once you get to my age is like, yeah,

I stopped thinking at about 8 o 'clock So anyways, thank you very much for joining us and I I hope the the

Twitter Storm that's going to come your direction won't be Too outrageous and too nasty, but you and I both know it's coming.

Oh, yeah Well, the nice thing is my mute list I found out is infinite and there's no limit to that So you oh, yeah, it's good to add more.

Yeah between my mute and block list. It's pretty epic There's no there's no two ways about it. So thank you very much for joining us brother.

We really really appreciate it I thank you. God bless those blessings All righty

Wow, we went we went 90 minutes on that one. That's great.

All right I'm not gonna make any more comments on everything else that's going on right now We will wait for that until the dividing line on Thursday but there is a bunch of stuff to be getting into that's really important and I I probably should oh,

I Know I know well since rich has got all but all this work putting all this stuff back together again in here

Will be in here on Thursday Yeah, Richard. I just got rich got excited about that By the way, you did not

Center the bowtie There now the bowtie is centered and it's appropriate

It was a little bit off I hadn't noticed it but I just I just fixed it anyway there is one particular topic in regards to Bishop and Presbyterian Episcopal that came out of that debate with Joe Heismire and This would be perfect to use that with and now it's fully functional in the sense that this is a brand new one

Relatively brand new one and we just couldn't get it to work with my Mac Right now it's working with my

Mac So The Mac can't move it

I have to make sure it doesn't go into sleep mode Work, you have to leave it on for the rest of the time. We're here

But this will work perfectly to be able to go through the demonstration that Episcopal and presbyteros are parallel terms and they are used interchangeably and Presbyteros does not mean here on it does not mean priest

And now we'll be able to do that on on Thursday along with other stuff like Spangler's new article about godly anti -semitism

Manly manly anti -semitism. Sorry and all this other Good question