Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (136 page)

It has long been recognized that there are problems with taking the Martyrdom of Polycarp at face value as a straightforward historical record of what actually happened to the bishop of Smyrna. The numerous parallels to the Gospel records of Jesus’ death appear contrived in places, the account is chock full of miraculous
elements, some of which—one immediately thinks of the dove that emerges from Polycarp’s side when the executioner slices him open—are too dubious even for the most credulous of critical readers, and the events in the aftermath of his death, when the Christians gather his remains to store in a sacred place to be revered on the “birthday” of his death, are difficult to assign to a generously early date. Or so it has seemed, at least, to some scholars since Lipsius first raised questions about the authenticity of the account in 1874.
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It was four years later that a thorough assault was made by Theodor Keim,
³⁰
who argued that the Martyrdom was dependent on the Letter of Lyons and Vienne and on the Acts of Thecla (Polycarp’s blood dowsing his fire was drawn from the miraculous thunderstorm that dowsed Thecla’s). The account, then, could not date from before the end of the second century. Moreover, the phrase “the catholic church in Smyrna” (16.2) indicates, for Keim, that it was written at a time when local churches were differentiating themselves from one another, and that Smyrna had a number of churches in its midst, only one of which was claiming to be the “catholic” church. This, for Keim, must indicate a date no earlier than Cyprian. Moreover, the lull in the persecution at the time the letter was written would fit the period immediately following the persecution of Decius. Some such mid-third-century date makes sense, as well, of a number of other themes in the book: the sacrificial deaths of martyrs in relation to the death of Christ (a theme first found in Tertullian); the reverence of a martyr’s death day; the valuation of the martyr’s bones as “precious stones” (not attested otherwise till the third century); and so on. Keim’s conclusion: the account achieved its shape only some time in the third century.
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Scholarship in this field, however, is resilient, and most historians continued to take the account at face value as an eyewitness report, with, perhaps, a few excesses at key points. A major shift occurred with the work of Hans von Campenhausen, who provided a critically respectable way of isolating a historical kernel in the account, while recognizing that it is also filled with literary and theological excesses that occasionally compromise its historical veracity.
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Von Campenhausen’s famous and influential claim was that an original bare-bones account of the death of Poly-carp had been redacted several times over the years, into the form we now have. The grounds for evaluating the various redactions were not only the anachronisms and supernatural elements, but also the fact that when Eusebius cites the account, he intimates the existence of a different, much shorter version of the events.

Von Campenhausen argued that the original eyewitness account of Polycarp’s death underwent four redactions, most of them after Eusebius’ day. An anti-Montanist redactor added to the account the condemnation of Quintus and of
voluntary martyrdom in
chapter 4
, as well as the reverence for the martyrs in 17.2–3 and 18.2. A “Gospel Redactor,” working after Eusebius, added the well-known parallels that showed Polycarp’s death was very much like that of Jesus. A later redactor added several miraculous elements to the account (5.2, 15.2). Finally both the epilogue dating the event (ch. 21) and the colophon indicating the transmission history of the text (ch. 22) were added at a later stage. Once one removes these
Interpolationen
, one is left with an authentic account of Polycarp’s death recorded by an eyewitness.

Von Campenhausen’s view was controversial and found considerable resistance among some reviewers, who found the proliferation of redactors excessive.
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It nonetheless had its attractions, as indicated by the most recent study—critical of the authenticity of the account—by Candida Moss: “Contesting the integrity of the account itself has formed a kind of via media for scholars wishing both to account for anachronisms and to preserve the historical quality of the account.”
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As Dehandschutter noted, “This theory became a ‘commonplace’ for much research within German scholarship.”
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Since the 1980s, however, it has fallen on hard times, as seen in the works of Dehandschutter, Saxer, and Buschmann.
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As Schoedel was able to state: “Although serious doubts have been entertained about the integrity of MPol, critical opinion is now moving in the opposite direction…. Here, then, is the final rejection of the notion that originally MPol would naturally have contained a more or less factual account uncontaminated by miracles and explicit theological reflection.”
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And yet, one is still left with enormous problems. If the questions raised concerning the integrity of the account cannot be sustained, one still has a report that both claims to be by an eyewitness and that presents numerous nonhistorical and anachronistic features. In light of the latter, can the book really be accepted as coming from an eyewitness?

A renewed attack on the authenticity of the account was launched by Silvia Ronchey in 1990.
³⁸
Ronchey argued that the Martyrdom derives from the late third century (260–80
CE),
about a century after Polycarp’s death (which she dates to 167
CE),
and was written largely for polemical reasons. The account
comes from a single author and is not heavily redacted. In her view, Lipsius and Keim were right to recognize that the anachronisms of the text need to be taken seriously as markers of a late date; moreover, the denunciation of voluntary martyrdom in the Quintus episode of
chapter 4
is aimed at Montanists, specifically in the church of Philomelium, and thus could be possible only in the third century when Montanism was strong in Phrygia. Other non-historical features involve the downplaying of the role of the imperial governor in Polycarp’s death, the elevated role of the mob, and of the Jews in particular. All these features are to be explained as an attempt to exculpate the Roman governor. The text is, in other words, a pro-Roman polemic—or rather apologia—dated best in the late third century.

It must be said that reviewers were not kind to Ronchey’s monograph, and few found it convincing.
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But as Moss has vigorously argued more recently, one does not need to follow Ronchey in all of her positions in order to recognize the enormous problems with the text. In fact, given these problems it is very hard indeed to see how the account can be accepted as anything like trustworthy—that is, an authentic, eyewitness account.

To begin with—a factor rarely noted—it is precisely the claims of the author to be an eyewitness that show we are not dealing with an eyewitness account. One should notice where the author’s asseverations occur. They occur at the very points of the narrative that are the most incredible and least susceptible of critical acceptance. Whenever a miracle happens, the author vouches for its occurrence by claiming to have observed it. The first time this happens is already in the summarizing account of the unbelievable noble endurance of torments by the Christian martyrs:

For who would not be astounded by their nobility, endurance, and love of the Master? For they endured even when their skin was ripped to shreds by whips, revealing the very anatomy of their flesh, down to the inner veins and arteries, while bystanders felt pity and wailed. But they displayed such nobility that none of them either grumbled or moaned, clearly showing us all that in that hour, while under torture, the martyrs of Christ had journeyed far away from the flesh, or rather, that the Lord was standing by, speaking to them. (2.2)

Not only did the Christians face brutal and excruciating torture, but they—all of them—refrained even from uttering a moan. That showed “to us” that they were receiving divine succor.

Credulity is strained even more in the next two eyewitness reports. The first is when Polycarp enters the place of his final trial: “But as he entered the stadium a voice came to Polycarp from heaven: ‘Be strong Polycarp, and be a man.’ No one saw who had spoken, but those among our people who were there heard the voice.” (9.1). This voice from heaven, then, was not heard by anyone else; it was a miraculous exhortation available only to the Christians with privileged access to the heavenly realm.

The final eyewitness guarantee of a miracle is the most striking. It occurs at the first attempt of the enemies of God to destroy his cherished saint:

When [Polycarp] sent up the “Amen” and finished the prayer, the men in charge of the fire touched it off. And as a great flame blazoned forth we beheld a marvel—we to whom it was granted to see, who have also been preserved to report the events to the others. For the fire, taking on the appearance of a vaulted room, like a boat’s sail filled with the wind, formed a wall around the martyrs’ body. And he was in the center, not like burning flesh but like baking bread or like gold and silver being refined in a furnace. And we perceived a particularly sweet aroma, like wafting incense or some other precious perfume. (15.1–2)

The fire does not touch the martyr’s body, but forms a wall around him; his body was not burned; and what wafted from the pyre was not the smell of reeking flesh but of perfume. Not everyone noticed this, though, but only the eyewitness who can guarantee the truth of the report since he and the other Christians were there, were really there.

The problem with this alleged eyewitness report should be clear. It is precisely at the most disputable and incredible parts of the narrative that the author inserts himself as someone who can testify to what he heard, saw, and smelled. He does not insert himself at nonproblematic points. His self-assertion is meant, then, to provide much-needed assurance for anyone inclined to think that those tortured ever might have moaned, or who doubt that voices come down from the heavens, or who might reasonably think that the flesh of martyrs could burn or stink.
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Apart from the miraculous elements of the text—which include the martyr’s blood gushing forth in such profusion as to douse the flames of his pyre, and a dove emerging from his side and flying to the heavens—there are other clearly nonhistorical features of the text, which should at least give one pause before too readily insisting that this really is a firsthand report. For one thing, it defies belief that the animal games and execution of criminals described in the text could have happened in a “stadium” (8.3, 9.1). Animal hunts happened in amphitheaters,
where the high walls would protect the crowds from hungry beasts who might want the choice morsels on offer by spectators, as Gary Bisbee notes:

Tò
would most properly denote a race track and not a place of butchery such as was the amphitheater. The stadium was normally a long and open-ended construction, often amounting to little more than a race track between two hills upon which spectators sat. A stadium would not have had the high inner walls that an amphitheater possessed to keep wild animals and gladiators from killing spectators.
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This was not written by someone who was there, or possibly by someone who was
ever
present at animal hunts, gladiatorial contests, or Christian executions. This conclusion is borne out by the fact that there is no official trial of the condemned, but only a summary mock trial that does not follow any known legal precedent (even though allegedly “observed” by an eyewitness). Even Bisbee, who very much wants to find something historical lying behind the traditions of the narrative, acknowledges that the account as we have it is not a real trial, based on a surviving commentarius. If a real trial did take place, it would have happened sometime before the scene in the stadium.
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But it is difficult to imagine when that might have been, given the flow of the narrative. It is better, with Moss, to see this account as modeled not on something that actually happened but on the Gospel accounts.
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The other pretensions to historicity in the account also fail. In chapter 21 the author gives us a precise indication of when the martyrdom took place: the eighth hour “on the second day of the new month of Xanthikos, February 23,” when “Philip of Tralles was high priest” and “Statius Quadratus was proconsul.” In this attempt to locate the narrative in time and place, however, the author has blundered. Timothy Barnes has shown that the dates simply do not work. Philip the Asiarch was high priest in 149–50, but “no conceivable argument will put the pro-consulate of Statius Quadratus before 153/4.”
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There was, in other words, a three year gap—and no one writing at either time could fail to know that the two terms did not overlap. This is written by someone living later.