BTW, I should add that Ignatius clearly knows the text of Luke (or at least Marcion’s version of Luke, though being an anti-Marcionite, it’s unlikely that’s the version Ignatius is referencing), so if Polycarp’s letter is taken as a reference to the letters of Ignatius, this would at least entail that Luke predates Polycarp. But there are many uncertainties to pick at even there (as I note in Ignatius Vexation).

Thanks for the response. Ug, what a mess.

I haven’t looked into that, so I don’t have a specific opinion about it, but it’s not an unusual problem to find in the scholarship. See my Ignatian Vexation for a similar conundrum I gave up on solving because it’s too much work for too little gain, as I suspect is the case here—which only means gain in re: my own work; for someone else it may be worthwhile, and there may even be scholarship on this already, you’d have to look around.

To answer whether anyone has discussed the specific thing that interests you, start with judicious keyword searches in Google Scholar; likewise locating any editions of or commentaries on this epistle published in the last fifty years, as they may have notes on the point. It’s complicated by the fact that you first have to confirm a stable Greek text (are there manuscript variants here?); and set aside questions like whether Polycarp actually wrote this or whether it was assigned to him later; and whether the letter is a unity or has been interpolated; and so on. Wikipedia will give you a sense of these problems though.

But the reason I can’t spend time on it (unless I were hired to) is that it won’t matter what the outcome is to anything I argue. It can’t be established that this letter was written before publication of the fourfold Gospel against the Marcionite canon. And if it was after, then whether he quoted Luke in this letter or not makes no difference to that fact. And that’s the only fact relevant to my own work. This gets into the vexations of dating, e.g. the latest and best scholarship puts Ignatius much later than tradition, and Polycarp’s “edition” of them will have been later still, possibly decades later for all we know; there are also multiple redactions of the Ignatians, raising the problem of when this letter was edited: for which edition? And so on.

Long story short:

Once you realize how many fucking weeds and sandtraps this is buried in, you start to lose enthusiasm for even bothering to solve problems like yours. I explain this emotive effect in my article about Ignatius (where I end drinking gin straight from the bottle). And that is already obsolete because the field has even made everything more complicated about Ignatius since I wrote it!

(This passage is noteworthy as being the only place where the epistle supposedly references Luke).

I was reading the David Robert Palmer translation compilation (2022 edition of a 2010 original): https://bibletranslation.ws/down/Polycarp_Epistle_To_The_Philippians.pdf

2:3 μνημονεύοντες δὲ ὧν εἶπεν ὁ κύριος διδάσκων· Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε· ᾧ μέτρῳ μετρεῖτε, ἀντιμετρηθήσεται ὑμῖν· καὶ ὅτι μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ καὶ οἱ διωκόμενοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ. 

³but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: “Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye measure out, it shall be measured to you again; and once more, “Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.”

I checked against Matthew, and the bold is from 7:1, while the underlined is from the end of 7:2. There’s no text between the two in the Greek Palmer gives. Yet his English translation gives the forgiveness and the merciful phrases with no Greek text?

So I checked another translation, which gives this Greek:
2:3 μνημονεύοντες δὲ ὧν εἶπεν ὁ κύριος διδάσκων· Μὴ κρίνετε, ἵνα μὴ κριθῆτε· ἀφίετε, καὶ ἀφεθήσεται ὑμῖν· ἐλεᾶτε, ἵνα ἐλεηθῆτε· ᾧ μέτρῳ μετρεῖτε, ἀντιμετρηθήσεται ὑμῖν· καὶ ὅτι μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ καὶ οἱ διωκόμενοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστὶν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ.

Okay, now we have Greek text there, at least.

Here’s Luke’s forgiveness phrase (6:37): ἀπολύετε καὶ ἀπολυθήσεσθε
Here’s Luke’s merciful phrase (6:36): Γίνεσθε οἰκτίρμονες καθὼς καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ὑμῶν οἰκτίρμων ἐστίν

Those are not direct references to Luke. And then I remembered I’d seen ἐλεᾶτε, ἵνα ἐλεηθῆτε before, in 1 Clement, which has “Ἐλεᾶτε, ἵνα ἐλεηθῆτε· ἀφίετε, ἵνα ἀφεθῇ ὑμῖν” in 13:2. Identical on the mercy phrase, and… that looks a lot closer to the forgiveness phrase as well.

So, why does this get annotated as a reference to Luke rather than 1 Clement? And is that Greek actually in Polycarp’s letter at all? (I’ve got two versions of the Greek, and they don’t agree… If Palmer’s is wrong, how has it not been corrected in >10 years? Surely someone far more competent than me in Greek would have noticed… and how does Palmer end up giving an English translation for Greek text he doesn’t present?)

Anyway, on to the interesting part, having disposed of those claimed Lukan references, we get to the last ‘quote’ in the passage, which largely looks like a blend of Matthew and Luke’s “Blessed are the poor” line. (Leaves out ‘in spirit’ from Matthew, follows Matthew on “αὐτῶν” but Luke on “τοῦ θεοῦ”). Except it also includes this entirely separate phrase: “καὶ οἱ διωκόμενοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης”, which is in neither Luke nor Matthew… And this is the last remaining reference to Luke in the epistle I’m aware of, so i have to wonder:

1. Does Polycarp know Luke at all? We’re down to maybe this one quote, and it’s not cleanly Luke.
2. Does Polycarp’s Matthew (which he plainly has) have this differently worded line in it? Is this a more primitive version of the text we have today?
3. Is this from some third source?
4. Is there any scholarship doubting Polycarp’s knowledge of Luke?

I can’t be the first person to notice this, just from casually looking into it as a lay person, right?

Sorry again for the off-topic post.

Thank you. You are right. Fixed.

Oh, side-tangent, but have you ever heard of the case of St. Philomena? It seems like it would provide a challenge to the notion that a vivid and detailed “God Person” legend can’t arise without a historical basis, or in a short timespan. Basically, a skeleton was discovered in the Roman catacombs in 1802, with three tiles nearby inscribed with “pax tecum Filumena”. This person was completely unknown to both history and Catholic tradition until this point. There are absolutely zero references to a St Philomena prior to this point, not even daffy ones in a centuries-removed hagiography. Some people presumed that the grave was that of a martyr, but this was based on the flawed assumptions of people at the time. Then, in 1833, an Italian nun named Maria Luisa di Gesù claims to have spoken to Philomena in many visions, even recounting her life story. This story is filled with very obvious errors and anachronisms that prove it absolutely was just made up by an ignorant 19th century person with no knowledge of the time period it alleges to be from. “Philomena” claims to have been the daughter of a third-century “Greek King” who tried to marry her off to Diocletian in order to prevent him from making war upon his kingdom. I don’t think I need to explain to a historian of Rome how ludicrous this portrayal of the time is. There’s other bizarre details too, like Diocletian meeting them in the “Baths Palace” in Rome and immediately lusting for the 13-year old Philomena’s hand in marriage, which of course leads to refusal, torture, virgin martyrdom, all the usual. Where it gets really interesting is when St John Vianney starts having visions of her less than 10 years after this! He “corresponds” with her regularly, she has an entire fleshed-out personality, he attributes miracles and healings to her, and he generally spreads her cult far and wide. Vianney’s fame and popularity rub off on her and lots of people become devoted to her. So, in just a little over 40 years we go from literally just a name, a body, and a presumption of martyrdom to a fully-fleshed out mental person with a personality, backstory, relationships, and divine portfolio, believed in by thousands! Maybe I’m overestimating it, but that sure seems like it would be important data for the discussion about the prior plausibility of claims about the rise of Christianity, doesn’t it? It seems like that’d be evidence that Mythicism is plausible, wouldn’t it? OK, technically there was a body, but there was no prior historical memory of Philomena – every detail about her life is indisputably made up. The physical remains only provided seed ideas for the myth – they might as well not have existed.

Both links point to the Amazon page for the book. I think the second link was supposed to point to your Secular Web review of “In Defense of Miracles”

https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-indef/

I have a recommendation too of an interesting author:

Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol.

He’s proof you can be an expert on lots of periods and different aspects of history, he’s an expert on Paganism in the British isles and on Neo-paganism, as well as the English Civil war and Oliver Cromwell (it’s impossible to study the politics of that era without knowing the religious disputes).

I can personally attest that “Pagan Britain” is an excellent book and he has a good lecture series on the Gresham college youtube site if anyone wants a taster. But don’t hesitate to buy any of his books.

Anyone who buys his civil war books should also read Christopher Hill’s work. Hutton tends to emphasise the religious aspects more, Hill more the class aspects, they have their disagreements, but they’re both excellent historians worth reading.