Ignatian Vexation
Last entry here I already mentioned one of the issues that came up: my stumbling into several muddles in New Testament studies that I thought had been reasonably resolved by now. Many issues I thought were cut-and-dried are actually mired in complexity, and my research in these areas has absorbed far more time than it should have. The two most annoying examples of this (though not the only ones) are in dating the contents of the New Testament and identifying their authorship and editorial history. There is no consensus on either ...
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In other words, not only is there no consensus, but there are dozens of positions, and arguments for each are elaborate and vast. It was only after over a month of wasting countless hours attempting to pursue these matters to some sort of condensable conclusion that I realized this was a fool's errand. I have changed strategy and will attempt some sort of broader, simpler approach to the issues occupying my chapter on this, though exactly what that will be I am still working out. It will involve, however, a return to what historians actually do in other fields, which New Testament scholars seem to have gotten away from in their zeal to make sense of data that's basically screwed in every conceivable way. For when it comes to establishing the basic parameters of core documents, I have never met the kind of chaos I've encountered in this field in any other subfield of ancient history I've studied.
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In most standard references or scholarly discussions, it's routinely claimed that the early Christian martyr Ignatius quotes the Gospel of Matthew in his letters, and Ignatius wrote those letters in the year 107 A.D. (or so), therefore Matthew was written before 107 A.D. That would be a fine example of establishing what we call a
terminus ante quem, "point [in time] before which," the latest year a particular document could have been written. If either premise were a settled fact, that is. Unfortunately, they aren't. Yet typically this little problem isn't mentioned or explained, and these premises are declared in some form as if no one doubted them.
Already I encountered a general muddle even before getting to this particular vexation. In any other field, when historians don't know the exact year a book was written, they determine a
terminus post quem ("point after which," also written
terminus a quo) and a
terminus ante quem ("point before which," also written
terminus ad quem) and then conclude the book was written sometime between those two years. And they admit they can't know any more than that, which is something New Testament scholars tend to gloss over.
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But in New Testament studies, the fact that the evidence only establishes termini for Matthew between A.D. 70 and 130 isn't something you will hear about in the references. Indeed, I say 130 only because the possibility that the earliest demonstrable terminus ante quem for Matthew may be as late as 170 involves a dozen more digressions even lengthier than this entire post.
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But what about Ignatius? First of all, the year he wrote is not actually known. He doesn't say (which is always odd of Christian letters--real ancient letters were routinely dated). And there is no consensus now, either. Dates from 102 to 117 are still defended by well-qualified scholars, and from what I can tell, any of these are possible. Normally that entails a
terminus ante quem of 117, not 107. Until possible dates later than 107 are conclusively refuted, we must accept that the
termini for Ignatius are from 102 to 117, so if Ignatius mentions Matthew, that sets a
terminus for Matthew of 117, not 107 (because any date up to 117 is possible).
But no, it can't be as simple as that. For yes, of course (as if you didn't see it coming), there is still contention as to whether the letters of Ignatius are even authentic, or which ones are authentic, or whether they have been edited or interpolated, or whether the one datable reference in them (to the reign of Trajan) is inauthentic (and thus Ignatius actually wrote in a different, later reign),and on and on. The concerns are not crank. But sorting through and assessing them all would take months of research. And
that's just on this one, entirely, mind-numbingly peripheral issue of the authenticity of the current text of the relevant epistles of Ignatius, all just to establish a terminus ante quem for Matthew!
