02 — The Epistle to the Philippians
Polycarp’s one surviving writing — the Epistle to the Philippians — its pastoral occasion, its governing theme of righteousness, its remarkably dense web of New Testament citations, and the role it plays in transmitting the letters of Ignatius. The section also handles the chapter-13/14 problem: whether the letter is a single document or, as P. N. Harrison argued, a conflation of two.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostolic Father)
The Epistle to the Philippians is the only text from Polycarp’s own hand that has come down to us, and it is doubly valuable: as a window onto the pastoral mind of a sub-apostolic bishop, and as an unusually rich early witness to the circulation and authority of the New Testament writings, above all 1 Peter and the Pauline corpus. It is also the letter that forwarded Ignatius’s collected correspondence to Philippi, making Polycarp the founding editor of the Ignatian corpus — and the seam between its chapters is the linchpin of the modern debate over its unity.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The One Surviving Letter | Polycarp’s only surviving work; its occasion (the fallen presbyter Valens, ch. 11; the passage of Ignatius); the righteousness theme (ch. 3); its dense New Testament citations (1 Peter, the Pauline corpus, 1 Tim. 6:10) and what they reveal about the early reception of Scripture; the textual transmission (Greek to ch. 9, then Latin; ch. 13 preserved in Greek by Eusebius). |
| The Letter and the Corpus | The letter’s role in transmitting Ignatius’s letters (ch. 13) — Polycarp as founding editor of the Ignatian corpus — and the chapter-13/14 unity-vs-two-letters question in full, with Harrison’s theory and its critics as a structured [Disputed: ...] note. |
See Also
- The Transmission of Ignatius — the Ignatius-side view of the corpus Polycarp forwarded
- The Bond — the relationship that occasioned the forwarding
- Smyrna and the Apostolic Link — the bishop behind the letter
- The Church Fathers — Polycarp among the earliest post-apostolic writers
References
- Polycarp. Epistle to the Philippians. Trans. in Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd ed.; Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers Part II; and Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
- Harrison, P. N. Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936.
- Hartog, Paul. Polycarp and the New Testament. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002.
- Holmes, Michael W. The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations. 3rd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.