Ignatius Of Antioch And The Infancy Narratives

The issue of the historicity of the infancy narratives probably will be getting a lot of attention in the coming weeks. In addition to the usual television programs, magazine articles, and such that we see during this time of the year, a movie on Jesus' infancy is due out in December. I want to begin a series of posts on the infancy narratives today.

Two issues that often come up in discussions of this subject are the genre of the infancy narratives and how widely the accounts were accepted among the earliest Christians. It's often suggested that the authors of Matthew and Luke didn't intend to convey historical accounts or that Paul may not have believed in the virgin birth, for example. Some critics will even argue that the infancy narratives were added to the gospels after their initial circulation. It's sometimes suggested that John 7:42 is evidence that the author of the fourth gospel didn't believe that Bethlehem was Jesus' birthplace.

There are many problems with arguments like these, and I'll be addressing some of the issues involved in future posts. But in this post I want to focus on one source that illustrates the problematic nature of these objections.

One of the questions we should ask is whether early Christianity seems to have been as divided as these theories suggest, particularly with regard to the material in the infancy narratives, but also in more general terms. Do we find early Pauline communities rejecting the virgin birth, while a Matthean community in another part of the world accepts the concept, for example? We should also ask whether it seems plausible that a document like the fourth gospel would be written late in the first century by an author who rejected Jesus' Davidic descent and His birth in Bethlehem. (Though John 7:42 is often cited against the Bethlehem birthplace, it also mentions Davidic descent.) Do we find early references to the material in the infancy narratives? How did the earliest sources interpret that material? Did they view the virgin birth, the Bethlehem birthplace, the visit of the magi, and other such details as unhistorical or as historical? With issues like these in mind, I want to turn to the source I'm focusing on in this article.

Ignatius was a bishop of Antioch who was martyred in the early second century. On the way to his martyrdom, he wrote seven letters, six of them to churches and one to another bishop, Polycarp. His writings are significant in this context not only because of how early he lived and his position as a bishop, for example, but also because of where he served as bishop and who he wrote to.

Antioch was an apostolic church. Peter, Paul, and Barnabas had been there, and so had other men who were active in apostolic circles (Acts 11:19-30, 13:1-3, 14:21-23, 14:26-15:3, 15:22, 15:30-35, 18:22-23, Galatians 2:11-13, 2 Timothy 3:11). The Christians there had been in contact with Jesus' brother James as well (Acts 15:13-23, Galatians 2:12). Much the same can be said of some of the churches Ignatius wrote to, such as the churches in Rome, Smyrna, and Ephesus (Acts 18:19-20:38, 28:14-31, Romans 1:1-7, 1 Corinthians 15:32, 16:8, Ephesians 1:1, 1 Timothy 1:3, 2 Timothy 1:17-18, 4:12, Revelation 2:1-11).

Ignatius was a contemporary of the apostles, lived in an environment that had been in close contact with multiple apostles and associates of the apostles, and was in contact with other Christians who lived in similar circumstances. He seems to have been particularly influenced by the apostle Paul:

"His [Ignatius'] letters are replete with Pauline ideas and letter structure. The most obvious example of this may be found in a comparison of the bishop's letter to the Ephesians with the Pauline letter of Ephesians, which I assume to be a product of the Pauline school and not of Paul himself. The elaborate greeting that Ignatius offers to the Ephesians, which is typical of his other letters as well, undoubtedly has been modeled upon similar Pauline forms. Numerous terms and phrases that Ignatius has employed in this greeting bear striking similarity to those that appear in the Pauline salutation (Eph 1:3-14). The themes and movement of ideas that follow throughout the bishop's letter show further parallels....we discover here a certain acknowledgment by the bishop that the church at Ephesus knew and revered Paul as well....The fact that Ignatius had modeled his own letter to the Ephesians so closely upon the pseudo-Pauline letter to Ephesus suggests that this form would have gained a happy reception by the Christians there....To some extent, he [Ignatius] specifically patterned his letter [to Rome] upon Paul's own letter to Rome....Ignatius borrows constantly from Pauline literary style....Ignatius makes special mention of Paul as a faith link between his own journey and that of the apostle (Ign. Eph. 12.2)." (Clayton N. Jefford, The Apostolic Fathers And The New Testament [Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006], pp. 41-42, 138-139)

We also see traces of Johannine influences in his writings, and he was in contact with some Johannine churches, such as the church of Smyrna, as well as John's disciple Polycarp. What, then, did he think of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke? Was he ignorant of such material? Did he oppose it? No, it seems that, to the contrary, he not only knew of and accepted the gospel of Matthew, but also drew from it often in his letters:

"[Matthew was] widely recognized among the numerous churches of the early second century...A careful reading of the Ignatian correspondence reveals that the bishop is very familiar with this particular gospel in comparison with remaining texts. Though he makes only rare reference to passages from the text of Matthew itself, he uses the work as the springboard for a variety of comments, thus to reveal a close familiarity with Matthean concerns and the ideas that are characteristic of the Matthean mindset. We can easily find a number of these usages....Ignatius makes use of phrases that appear to be unique to the text of Matthew...The potential parallels between Ignatius and the Gospel of Matthew would seem to be endless....it is clear that the Gospel of Matthew, both as a literary source and as a foundation for faith, gained an early status as the most widely known and utilized of our gospel texts through the churches of the early Christian world. The apostolic fathers attest to this fact on a wide scale. Connections to Matthew are evident in the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas, throughout the letters of Ignatius, in 1-2 Clement, and in the Martyrdom of Polycarp. This suggests that the text of Matthew circulated quickly around the Mediterranean and gained an authoritative status quite readily among disparate churches in different locations." (ibid., pp. 110, 140-143)

Bruce Metzger, whose book on the canon Bart Ehrman calls "the standard authoritative scholarly account" (Misquoting Jesus [San Francisco, California: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005], n. 10 on p. 220), comments that "It is probable that he [Ignatius] knew the Gospels according to Matthew and John, and perhaps also Luke." (The Canon Of The New Testament [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997], p. 49)

Ignatius not only refers to concepts from the infancy narratives, but even does so in contexts in which he's emphasizing the historical nature of the material he's discussing. Against Docetists he writes:

"He [Jesus] was truly of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Son of God according to the will and power of God; that He was truly born of a virgin, was baptized by John, in order that all righteousness might be fulfilled by Him; and was truly, under Pontius Pilate and Herod the tetrarch, nailed to the cross for us in His flesh....Now, He suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved. And He suffered truly, even as also He truly raised up Himself, not, as certain unbelievers maintain, that He only seemed to suffer, as they themselves only seem to be Christians. And as they believe, so shall it happen unto them, when they shall be divested of their bodies, and be mere evil spirits." (Letter To The Smyrnaeans, 1-2)

Notice that Ignatius refers to an actual, physical, historical virgin birth. Notice, also, that he mentions the virgin birth along with other prominent concepts of the Christian faith, such as Jesus' Divinity and atoning death, and that he doesn't seem to think that he has to make an argument for the virgin birth. Apparently, he expects his readers to agree with it. He also refers, elsewhere, to the star of Bethlehem as something historical, along with Mary's historical virginity and the historical birth and death of Jesus (Letter To The Ephesians, 19). Notice, again, that we have a contemporary of the apostles who was the bishop of an apostolic church influenced by multiple apostles, and he was writing to other apostolic churches. The apostles who influenced these churches included men such as Paul, John, and Peter, whose purported writings don't say much about Jesus' infancy. Yet, the people and churches they most directly influenced are known to have widely accepted the gospels of Matthew and Luke and the material in the infancy narratives.

Ignatius comes from a church that had recently been in contact with Paul, Peter, and James, he's writing to Pauline and Johannine churches, and he draws material from the gospel of Matthew. The early churches were highly networked, and the sort of variety of influences that we see in Ignatius' life would have been common around the Christian world. We're often told about how the apostles allegedly disagreed with each other, and a supposed Petrine community will be set against an alleged Johannine community, Paul will be set against James, etc. But the earliest Christians themselves thought that the apostles had a large degree of unity (Luke 22:30, John 21:19, 1 Corinthians 15:11, Galatians 2:7-10, Ephesians 2:20, 2 Peter 3:2, 3:15-16, Revelation 21:14), and so did Ignatius and other sources living just after the time of the apostles (Clement of Rome [First Clement, 5, 42, 44]; Ignatius [Letter To The Ephesians, 11; Letter To The Magnesians, 13; Letter To The Romans, 4]; Polycarp [Letter To The Philippians, 9]; Papias [in Eusebius, Church History, 3:39:4]; Aristides [Apology, 2]; The Epistle Of Barnabas [5]).

Issues surrounding Jesus' infancy would have been of significant interest to the early Christians in general from the start. Though different Jews had different concepts of who the Messiah would be, there was widespread belief in concepts such as the Davidic descent of the Messiah and an association with Bethlehem. Such issues probably would have been discussed during Jesus' public ministry and earlier among relatives and some other sources, as the gospels indicate (Matthew 2:4-6, Mark 10:47-48, Luke 20:41-44, John 7:41-42). The concept that there would be widespread neglect of such issues early on, followed by some portions of the early church fabricating stories about Jesus' background near the end of the first century and thereafter gaining such widespread acceptance of those stories among both Christians and non-Christians, is absurd. It's likely that Ignatius of Antioch is a reflection of the sort of concern about Jesus' background that existed from the beginning of church history. And his belief that the material in the infancy narratives is historical in nature is the mainstream view of early Christianity. In the next segment in this series, I'll discuss some more examples.