There are further misstatements made by Dr. Lightfoot to which I must briefly refer before turning to other matters. He says, with unhesitating boldness:--
One highly important omission is significant. There is no mention, from first to last, of the Armenian version. Now it happens that this version (so far as regards the documentary evidence) _has been felt to be the key to the position, and around it the battle has raged fiercely since its publication_. One who (like our author) maintains the priority of the Curetonian letters, was especially bound to give it some consideration, for it furnishes the most formidable argument to his opponents. This version was given to the world by Petermann in 1849, the same year in which Cureton's later work, the _Corpus Ignatianum_, appeared, and therefore was unknown to him. Its _bearing occupies a more or less prominent place in all, or nearly all, the writers who have specially discussed the Ignatian question during the last quarter of a century. This is true of Lipsius and Weiss and Hilgenfeld and Uhlhom, whom he cites, not less than of Merx and Denzinger and Zahn, whom he neglects to cite_.
Now first as regards the facts. I do not maintain the 1 "Contemporary Review," February, 1875, p. 183.
priority of the Curetonian Epistles in this book myself, indeed I express no personal opinion whatever regarding them which is not contained in that general declaration of belief, the decision of which excites the wrath of my diffident critic, that the Epistles in no form have "any value as evidence for an earlier period than the end of the second or beginning of the third century, even if they have any value at all." I merely represent the opinion of others regarding those Epistles. Dr. Lightfoot very greatly exaggerates the importance attached to the Armenian version, and I call special attention to the passages in the above quotation which I have taken the liberty of italicising. I venture to say emphatically that, so far from being considered the "key of the position," this version has, with some exceptions, played a most subordinate and insignificant part in the controversy, and as Dr. Lightfoot has expressly mentioned certain writers, I will state how the case stands with regard to them. Weiss, Lipsius, Uhlhorn, Merx, and Zahn certainly "more or less prominently" deal with them. Denzinger, however, only refers to Petermann's publication, which appeared while his own _brochure_ was passing through the press, in a short note at the end, and in again writing on the Ignatian question, two years after,(1) he does not even allude to the Armenian version. Beyond the barest historical reference to Petermann's work, Hilgenfeld does not discuss the Armenian version at all So much for the writers actually mentioned by Dr. Lightfoot.