IGNATIUS’S SPURIOUS EPISTLES STILL MORE INTERPOLATED

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그럴법한 위조의 이그나티우스 편지들- 여전히 더욱 추가 삽입되었음

Justin Edwards demonstrates how the second link of this chain has been forged. After assuming that when John the revelatory spoke of the Lord’s day, all Christians knew that it was the day of the resurrection, on which they were to meet, he continues:

Hence Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 101 only about half a dozen years after the death of the apostle, speaks of the Lord’s day familiarly and without explanation, as if everybody understood it. And he gives this title to the first day of the week exactly after the manner of the apostle himself. ‘Let us (Christians) no more Sabbatize,’ he says, --that is, keep the seventh day, as the Jews did--’but let us keep the Lord’s day,’ ‘Let everyone that loves Christ keep holy the Lord’s Day, the queen of days, the resurrection day, the highest of all days.’” 30

As usual, Justin Edwards saves himself the trouble of giving the reference. Had he done so, his deception would have been evident, viz., that the above statements which, seemingly, fit together so nicely, are fabricated in this manner: First, he suppresses the phrase in the shorter version of the epistle to the Magnesians, “living according to the Lord’s life;” secondly, he substitutes for it, from the enlarged and still worse interpolated version manufactured probably in the fourth century, the term, “celebrate the Lord’s day;” and, finally to strengthen it, he joins the rest of the statement from the enlarged version to his own interpolated shorter version.

Dr. Edwards, we are sorry to say, is not the only one who has done this kind of work. A number of writers are guilty of this sort of deception, and among them must be included Archbishop Wake, in his translation of the Fathers, which is thus ably reviewed by Cox:--

“There is, however, in the original no word or phrase which corresponds to the phrase ‘the Lord’s day,’ or to the word ‘ keeping:’ the literal translation is, ‘No longer observing Sabbaths, but living according to the Lord’s life, [Greek phrase] in which also our life is sprung up’. Indeed, the archbishop admits, in a note, that this translation would be correct; while his own is by many thought inconsistent, not only with the expressions in the original, but with the whole scope of the passage. (See Domville, I, 241-251; and Powell in Kitto’s Cyclop,II, 270, first edition.)

“To such an extent have the epistles of Ignatius been corrupted by interpolation (see Cheval‎lier, Introd. 43-54). That even those considered genuine (among which is the one above quoted) were suspected by Lardner and Beausobre to have been tampered with (Domville, vol. I, 241), and have recently been pronounced by Mr. Cureton (with whom Lipsius agrees) to have been copiously interpolated for the same dogmatically purposes which prompted to the forgery of four of the seven, and by the same forging hand. (Cureton’s Corpus Ignatianum, London, 1849; and Lipsius in Jour, of the Historico-Theological Society of Germany for 1856). But not to insist upon this, it is more important to mention that a passage still frequently quoted in popular treatises from one of the epistles as genuine, has for two centuries past been rejected by every scholar as spurious. The words are:

Let us therefore no longer observe Sabbaths after the manner of the Jews: and rejoice in days of idleness; for "he that does not work, let him not eat." For say the [holy] oracles, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread." But let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in meditation on the law, not in relaxation of the body, admiring the workmanship of God, and not eating things prepared the day before, nor using lukewarm drinks, and walking within a prescribed space, nor finding delight in dancing and plaudits which have no sense in them. And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every lover of Christ keep the Lord's Day as a festival, the resurrection-day, the queen and chief of all the days [of the week].
[See Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesia’s] 31

It is sad enough that writings of such men as Ignatius, and others of the post apostolic period, have been thus shamefully interpolated for “dogmatically purposes,” -- in this instance manifestly to smuggle in Sunday as the Lord’s day. But is it not still more wicked to interpolate, and to misquote their compositions, with the avowed purpose of making null and void the direct commands of the divine Word of God? That there was not only one instance of this, and that interpolation has been frequently perpetrated, Cox plainly shows, giving instances such as that of the above-mentioned Bishop Wilson, and others. How long this has been going on, and how early it was reproved, is seen fro the correspondence between Dr. Priestley and E. Evanson, near the end of the eighteenth century. Dr. Priestley had, in his Theological Repository, published at Birmingham in 1786 and 1788, given this very quotation from Ignatius, as “keeping the Lord’s day”. In consequence of this, Mr. Evanson wrote to him as follows:

But pray, good sir, by what rules of construction do you translate [the Greek phrase] as ‘keeping’. The only meaning of those two Greek words that I am acquainted with is ‘living according to’. And if the word [Greek word] be allowed to be part of the original sentence, the phrase ‘living according to the Lord’s life,’ viz., the spiritual life he now lives in heaven, is perfectly intelligible, and much of the same kind with what we meet with in several places of the canonical epistles, particularly in that to the Colossians, chapter 3. But if the phrase ‘living according to the Lord’s day’ has any meaning at all, it is entirely beyond my comprehension.” 32

Much more might be said to show up the improper use of the writings of Ignatius; but the reader will readily concede that enough has been brought forward to show that this second link in the chain to connect the Lord’s day of John with the Sunday Lord’s day of tradition, will not hold.

주님의 삶을 본받아 살며, 를 주님의 날을 준수하며로 바꾸었습니다.

이그나티우스의 글들은유세비우스가 증언할 때에는7개에 불과하였었는데 16-17세기에 이르면서 갑자기 15개가 되었습니다.

이그나티우스는 죽어서도 속임을 당하게 되었습니다.

주님의 은혜가 이 글을 천천히라도 읽으시는 분들에게 넘치기를 바라겠습니다.

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