If I am to be honest, it was with this section that I lost all hope in this book. One of the things I’ve tried to do with this work, and these authors, is to err on the side of being as fair as possible. I’ve attempted to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, and even dive further into their arguments in order to try to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
This section though made it clear that I was probably being a bit too charitable. Instead, I had to come to the conclusion that either Britt and Wingo were coming from a place of deep ignorance and had very little clue as to what they were discussing, or they were being purposely deceptive in order to further their conclusion anyway they could.
For instance, one of the theories they floated in Chapter 5, and we will tackle it more in depth when we dive into that chapter, is that “the letters of Ignatius are actually reworked letters from Peregrinus Proteus,” who they claim was a Christian author. Their source for Peregrinus was Lucian Samosata, who wrote a satirical biography that was hostile towards Peregrinus. Not only that, but Lucian was openly hostile to Christianity, which fits with what we know about Lucian, who was known to attack beliefs he personally viewed as being disingenuous.
The bigger problem here though, beyond taking an extremely biased account at face value, is that Peregrinus was not a Christian author. He was a Greek Cynic Philosopher. He spent a little time with Christians in Palestine, but he’s not identified as a Christian.
It’s this next issue that makes me doubt they know how to read a dendrogram, which would explain why they cropped out so much relevant data, or they are simply making things up. Because they claim that “the letters (of Ignatius) match with Paul’s Prison Letters.”
Their results, as shown in “Exhibit 2,” show no such thing. How they read a connection between the two is beyond me. I can’t even give them the benefit of the doubt here, because their own graph clearly shows two distinct clusters that are not close in distance at all. There is no way to interpret it as the two clusters being similar. Either Britt and Wingo have no idea how to read a dendrogram, they have no idea how to interpret their results, or they are making things up.
Honestly, it might be both. But if we interpret every other graph they have in the same manner they are doing with “Exhibit 2,” then basically all of their arguments are invalidated.
The fact that their next argument is about Onesimus, and how Ignatius and Paul both mention him, only demonstrates the multitude of problems here. As already discussed, their argument that Philemon was a forgery in order to give power to Onesimus only works if Philemon is an early first-century letter.
Yet, Britt and Wingo want to argue that it, and all of the Pauline letters, are actually second-century works. They can’t have it both ways, yet their attempt to have it both ways just keeps invalidating their arguments, and erasing any credibility they may have had.
What the author’s goal here though is to show that the Pauline prison letters and the letter of Ignatius were written or edited by the same person. So who do they think the culprit is? Well they have two options. One of those options is Onesimus.
We can say that they clearly know nothing about Onesimus, which is a huge issue here. It’s a massive glaring oversight. Because if we assign these works to Onesimus, not only are the prison letters, most likely, first-century writings, which they firmly deny, or the writings of Ignatius are actually decades earlier than Britt and Wingo claim.
If we take Ignatius as the author instead, and subscribe to the idea that Ignatius was actually Peregrinus, we have to accept a view with virtually no evidence behind it, we have to ignore every mention of the Pauline letters prior to Ignatius, we have to ignore the fact that Peregrinus was a Cynic philosopher, and then we have to accept hostile satire as being historically accurate.
With all of this in mind, I have to jump back to their Irenaeus analysis. I don’t think they ran Irenaeus at all. It would explain why they never show the evidence they supposedly got, which they imply performed better than they thought. I think it proved to be too much work, because getting access to the Greek reconstruction is a chore, as it’s only published in a French series, as far as I can tell.
Seeing their treatment of Ignatius, and how the results of their analysis don’t seem to actually matter, I suspect that they made assumptions, and believing they had to be true, simply put them forward, largely as they did with Ignatius.
The Latter Letters
That Britt and Wingo have placed the cart before the horse, the conclusion before the evidence, is clearly seen in their next section that deals with letters that were written relatively late. In particular, they look at the Pastoral letters, which are generally seen as forgeries.
Where we see their conclusion coming first is when they claim that the Pastorals must have been written after 144 A.D., because they are not included in Marcion’s letter collection. They throw in a few more references they made in Chapter 5, and we will get to them later, but their overall argument is that they must be mid-second century, with the primary argument being that Marcion doesn’t mention them.
Yet, we have good reason to believe that both Polycarp and Ignatius reference 1 Timothy. This would mean they predate Marcion. But Britt and Wingo have placed Marcion center to their hypothesis, and as we’ve seen, anything that doesn’t match up with him is largely dismissed.
We see this again with the talk about Second Peter, who mentions a collection of letters by Paul. Britt and Wingo claim that since we “don’t get mention of Paul’s letters or collection until 144,” we know that the text must be late.
Not only does this make the assumption that Marcion is the creator of such lists, or that they originate with him, but it’s an argument from silence, which we’ve already discussed, and it ignores that letters were often collected.
Timothy N. Mitchell, in “Myths about Autographs: What they were and how long they may have survived,” states:
“In the time of Paul in the first century, it was common practice for a copy to be made of a letter before it was dispatched and retained in the sender’s archives. From these archived copies, if the author was famous or influential, a collection of letters might be gathered, edited, and circulated as a literary unit.”
Not to mention the circular logic here. Second Peter, which mentions a collection of Paul’s letters, must be post 144 A.D., because that’s the first time a collection of letters is mentioned; thus Second Peter must be later.
Then, to round it all out, we get clear evidence that Britt and Wingo don’t understand how texts are dated. The terminus post quem is the technical phrase for the last date a manuscript or text could have been written. This would be based on things like, when is the first time we see mention of that text.
The terminus ante quem is the earliest date that a text could be from. If a text, for instance, mentions the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, then we know it has to have been penned after that.
A late reference doesn’t suggest that a text is late though. Especially when, in general, we lack sources. This argument from silence is worse when you also ignore what our earliest sources say. When talking about Second Peter, for instance, Britt and Wingo claim that our earliest attestation to it is the third century with Origen. Yet, Eusebius tells us in book 6 of his Ecclesiastic History, that Clement of Alexandria wrote a commentary on Second Peter. This is affirmed by both Cassiodorus and Photius.
We also have possible allusions to Second Peter in Irenaeus’ work, Against Heresies. In book 3, chapter 1, we have a possible allusion to 2 Peter 1:15, while later on, in book 4, there is a possible allusion to 2 Peter 2:4-7. Then there is a possible allusion to 2 Peter 3:8 in book 5. While one could argue in this case that both 2 Peter and Irenaeus are relying on Psalms here, it seems quite certain that Irenaeus is following what 2 Peter infers from Psalms.
The rest of this section adds little to the discussion, so we will move on.