Layered Authorship in Ignatius of Antioch's Epistolary Corpora

A peculiarity of the reception of the letters attributed to Ignatius of Antioch is that the seven letters in the critical editions and translations published over the last century are virtually never found as such in the manuscript tradition. While the seven epistles of our editions are the result of an artificial découpage based on an extremely successful scholarly reconstruction of the so-called »middle recension,« the manuscript witnesses across several manuscript traditions famously contain further Ignatian letters as well as longer recensions of the seven (and occasionally shorter and fewer letters), which is how the historical reader would have encountered this early Christian author. Taking cue from recent scholarly conversations on the disconnect between the configuration of epistolary corpora in manuscripts and their re-arrangement in modern printed collections, this contribution explores how the various types of Ignatian collections adjust and negotiate the authorial image of one Ignatius of Antioch, disciple of the apostles.