The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians (commonly abbreviated Pol. Phil.)
is an
epistle
An epistle (; el, ἐπιστολή, ''epistolē,'' "letter") is a writing directed or sent to a person or group of people, usually an elegant and formal didactic letter. The epistle genre of letter-writing was common in ancient Egypt as par ...
attributed to
Polycarp, an early
bishop of Smyrna
The Metropolis of Smyrna ( el, Μητρόπολη Σμύρνης) is an ecclesiastical territory (diocese) of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, modern Turkey. The Christian community of Smyrna was one of the Seven Churches of Asia, me ...
, and addressed to the early
Christian
Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
church in
Philippi
Philippi (; grc-gre, Φίλιπποι, ''Philippoi'') was a major Greek city northwest of the nearby island, Thasos. Its original name was Crenides ( grc-gre, Κρηνῖδες, ''Krenides'' "Fountains") after its establishment by Thasian colon ...
. It is widely believed to be a composite of material written at two different times (see ), in the first half of the second century.
The epistle is described by
Irenaeus as follows:
: There is also a forceful epistle written by Polycarp to the Philippians, from which those who wish to do so, and are anxious about their salvation, can learn the character of his faith, and the preaching of the truth.
The epistle is one of a number believed to have been written by Polycarp, but is the only extant document.
[ Kirsopp Lakebr>''The Apostolic Fathers'']
Volume 1. (London: Heinemann, 1912), pp. 280-281.
Manuscript tradition
The epistle was composed in
Greek, but the Greek text has not been preserved in its entirety. Eight Greek manuscripts are known, but in each the text is defective and incomplete. The oldest Greek witness i
Vaticanus Graecus 859from the 11th–13th centuries, but most are from the 15th–16th centuries.
There is a complete
Latin translation of the epistle. It survives in 13 or 14 manuscripts, the earliest perhaps from the 9th century. The quality of the Latin text is disputed, but it is based on a Greek text older than the existing Greek
stemma
Stemma (plural stemmata) may refer to:
* In stemmatics, an approach to textual criticism, a stemma or stemma codicum is a diagram showing the relationships of the various versions of a text to earlier versions or manuscripts
* Tree-like diagrams ...
.
A few excerpts of the epistle are preserved in
Syriac. These include parts of chapters 5, 7 and 12.
There is an
Armenian translation based on Vaticanus Graecus 859.
Authorship and unity
Scholars generally agree that Pol. Phil. is an authentic epistle of Polycarp.
One potential objection to the authenticity of the epistle, however, is the apparent chronological inconsistency between Chapters 9 and 13.
In Chapter 9, Polycarp shows that he is fully aware that his friend
Ignatius has suffered martyrdom, perhaps some time ago:
But in Chapter 13, Polycarp references a letter sent to him by Ignatius quite recently (see the
Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp
The Epistle of Ignatius to Polycarp (often abbreviated Ign. Poly.) is an epistle attributed to Ignatius of Antioch, a second-century bishop of Antioch, and addressed to Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna. It was written during Ignatius' transport from ...
), and seems to be unaware of Ignatius' ultimate fate:
Various efforts have been made to explain this seeming discrepancy. The most widely accepted proposal was put forward by Pearcy Neale Harrison in 1936: writing in the ''
Journal of Biblical Literature'', Harrison argued that the Epistle is actually a merger of two authentic letters of Polycarp.
The first letter, written just before Ignatius' death, would consist of Chapter 13 and possibly also Chapter 14. It would have served as a short Cover Letter for the
epistles of Ignatius
Ignatius of Antioch (; Greek: Ἰγνάτιος Ἀντιοχείας, ''Ignátios Antiokheías''; died c. 108/140 AD), also known as Ignatius Theophorus (, ''Ignátios ho Theophóros'', lit. "the God-bearing"), was an early Christian writer ...
, to which it refers explicitly:
The second letter, written many years later, would constitute the bulk of the epistle (Chapters 1–12). Harrison named this letter the Crisis Letter,
because it seems to have been written in response to a crisis in the Philippian church, in which its
presbyter Valens was removed from his post for "covetousness" (Chapter 11).
These two letters would have been compiled together, either accidentally or intentionally, by a later editor.
This view, or some variation of it, continues to enjoy widespread support among scholars, although some continue to argue for the unity of the epistle, while a few others argue that the Cover Letter is a late forgery and only the Crisis Letter is authentic.
Date
Scholars' estimates for the Cover Letter (Pol. Phil. 13) are largely dependent on the dating of the epistles of Ignatius, to which they explicitly refer. Traditionally, the Ignatian epistles are dated to around the year 108 CE during the reign of the Roman emperor
Trajan, based on the writings of the 4th century church historian
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christia ...
.
[Chronicle, from the Latin translation of Jerome, p. 276.](_blank)
/ref> However, some modern scholars have questioned this view, arguing for a date in the 130s or 140s CE (see Ignatius of Antioch). In that case, the Cover Letter would be dated correspondingly later.
The Crisis Letter (Pol. Phil. 1–12) would date some time after Ignatius' death, but it is unclear precisely how much later it might have been written. Polycarp's death, which occurred around 155-167 CE, sets an upper limit
In mathematics, the limit inferior and limit superior of a sequence can be thought of as limiting (that is, eventual and extreme) bounds on the sequence. They can be thought of in a similar fashion for a function (see limit of a function). For a ...
. P. N. Harrison, who accepted the traditional Trajanic date of the epistles of Ignatius, dated the Crisis Letter to around 135-137 CE
If one accepts the minority view that Pol. Phil. is a unified letter, then the epistle as a whole would date to around the same time as the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch.
Content
Polycarp speaks of the proper living of wives, widows, deacons, younger men, virgins and elders (4–6) and offers prescriptions for how a Christian community ought to be organized and to conduct itself.[ ]
Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Wives:
* eing taught infaith given them
* Love
* Purity
* Feeling affection for husbands ‘in all truth’
* Loving all equally ‘with all self-restraint’
* To teach children in ‘the reverential fear of God’
Widows:
* Being self-controlled ‘concerning the faith of the Lord’
* Interceding incessantly concerning everyone
* Knowing that they are an altar of God
* Perhaps: Inspecting others and/or being inspected
Deacons:
* Being blameless as ministers of God and Christ, not people
* Free of love of money
* Self-restrained ‘in every way’
* Compassionate
* Attentive
* Proceeding ‘according to the truth of the Lord, who became a deacon/minister for everyone’
Young Men:
* Being blameless ‘in all things’
* Concerned about purity above all else
* Keeping themselves in check ‘with respect to all evil’
Virgins:
* Walking ‘in a blameless and pure conscience’
Elders:
* Being compassionate
* Being merciful to all
* Turning back those who have strayed
* Visiting all the weak/sick
* Always taking thought for the good ‘in the sight of God and people’
* Knowing that ‘we are all in debt because of sin’
Widows’ most significant mention is in Pol. Phil. 4.3, where they are spoken of as ‘knowing that they are an altar of God’. He invokes it without clarification of its meaning. This in itself is notable because he seems to presume that his audience will understand why he employs this particular figure of speech and will know upon what discourses he draws in so doing. Perhaps this is an image with which Polycarp assumes his intended audience will be familiar. This is one of a number of such references in eight early Christian texts generally dated to the second through the fifth centuries AD. In addition to Pol. Phil., these texts are: Tertullian Ad uxorem, Methodius Methodius or Methodios may refer to:
* Methodius of Olympus (d. 311), Christian bishop, church father, and martyr
*Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, a seventh-century text purporting to be written by Methodius of Olympus
* Methodios I of Constantinop ...
' Symposium, the Didascalia Apostolorum, the Apostolic Constitutions
The ''Apostolic Constitutions'' or ''Constitutions of the Holy Apostles'' (Latin: ''Constitutiones Apostolorum'') is a Christian collection divided into eight books which is classified among the Church Orders, a genre of early Christian litera ...
, Pseudo-Ignatius’ letter To the Tarsians, Gregory of Nazianzus Funeral Oration on His Father, and the Testamentum Domini
''Testamentum Domini'' ("Testament of Our Lord") is a Christian treatise which belongs to the genre of the ancient church orders. The work can be dated about the 5th-century CE even if a 4th-century date is sometimes proposed. The provenience is ...
.
Margaret Butterfield concludes the following:
The epistle warns against a number of disorders in the church and against apostasy, and encourages the Christians to persevere in good works. It also acted as a covering letter for a collection of writings by Ignatius of Antioch, whose works were being collected by the church at Philippi after Ignatius' visit there.[Glenn Davis]
''The Development of the Canon of the New Testament''
/ref>
Here is one quotation from the epistle:
One of the epistle's more important features is its use and citation of other early Christian writings, many of which later came to be part of the New Testament. The epistle has even been described as "pastiche-like" due to its heavy use of allusions and citations to other writings, which make up a large portion of the text.
In Chapter 7, Polycarp exhorts the Philippians to reject various heretical doctrines, but never mentions any particular heretics by name. For example, he attacks docetism, the belief that Jesus did not appear on Earth in the flesh, by citing the First Epistle of John: ("For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is an antichrist"). He also attacks unnamed individuals who claim that "there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment," calling them "the first-born of Satan" (Pol. Phil. 7.1). Importantly, the Christian apologist Irenaeus of Lyon
Irenaeus (; grc-gre, Εἰρηναῖος ''Eirēnaios''; c. 130 – c. 202 AD) was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the deve ...
claimed in his book ''Against Heresies
''Against Heresies'' (Ancient Greek: Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως, ''Elenchos kai anatropē tēs pseudōnymou gnōseōs'', "On the Detection and Overthrow of the So-Called Gnosis"), some ...
'' that Polycarp had called the unorthodox Christian thinker Marcion of Sinope "the first-born of Satan." This led P. N. Harrison to conclude that Polycarp was in fact referring to Marcion in this epistle, albeit at an early stage in Marcion's ideological development. Many other scholars, however, have found Harrison's argument to be unconvincing.
References
Bibliography
*Richardson, C. C. ed. ''Early Christian Fathers''. Philadelphia. Westminster. 1953. reprinted Macmillan 1970.
External links
Greek text of the ''Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians''
* Rick Brannan's translation of Kirsopp Lake's Greek text of Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians
Letter to the Philippians: 2012 Translation & Audio Version
*
{{Authority control
Works by the Church Fathers
Apostolic Fathers
Christianity in Roman Macedonia
Ancient Philippi
2nd-century Christian texts