Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians

. The epistle was composed in Greek, but the Greek text has not been preserved in its entirety. Eight Greek manuscripts are known, but in each the text is defective and incomplete. The oldest Greek witness is Vaticanus Graecus 859 from the 11th–13th centuries, but most are from the 15th–16th centuries. It survives in 13 or 14 manuscripts, the earliest perhaps from the 9th century. The quality of the Latin text is disputed, but it is based on a Greek text older than the existing Greek stemma. These include parts of chapters 5, 7 and 12. There is an Armenian translation based on Vaticanus Graecus 859. ==Authorship and unity==

Scholars generally agree that Pol. Phil. is an authentic epistle of Polycarp. The first letter, written just before Ignatius' death, would consist of Chapter 13 and possibly also Chapter 14. It would have served as a short Cover Letter for the epistles of Ignatius, to which it refers explicitly: The second letter, written many years later, would constitute the bulk of the epistle (Chapters 1–12). Harrison named this letter the Crisis Letter, although some continue to argue for the unity of the epistle, while a few others argue that the Cover Letter is a late forgery and only the Crisis Letter is authentic. ==Date==

Scholars' estimates for the Cover Letter (Pol. Phil. 13) are largely dependent on the dating of the epistles of Ignatius, to which they explicitly refer. Traditionally, the Ignatian epistles are dated to around the year 108 AD during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan, based on the writings of the 4th century church historian Eusebius of Caesarea. However, some modern scholars have questioned this view, arguing for a date in the 130s or 140s AD (see Ignatius of Antioch). In that case, the Cover Letter would be dated correspondingly later. The Crisis Letter (Pol. Phil. 1–12) would date some time after Ignatius' death, but it is unclear precisely how much later it might have been written. Polycarp's death, which occurred around 155-167 AD, sets an upper limit. P. N. Harrison, who accepted the traditional Trajanic date of the epistles of Ignatius, dated the Crisis Letter to around 135-137 CE If one accepts the minority view that Pol. Phil. is a unified letter, then the epistle as a whole would date to around the same time as the epistles of Ignatius of Antioch. ==Content==

Polycarp speaks of the proper living of wives, widows, deacons, younger men, virgins and elders (4–6) and offers prescriptions for how a Christian community ought to be organized and to conduct itself. Wives: • [Being taught in] faith given them • Love • Purity • Feeling affection for husbands "in all truth" • Loving all equally "with all self-restraint" • To teach children in "the reverential fear of God" Here is one quotation from the epistle: Another, used by Pope Leo XIV in his apostolic exhortation on love for the poor (2025), states that One of the epistle's more important features is its use and citation of other early Christian writings, many of which later came to be part of the New Testament. He also attacks unnamed individuals who claim that "there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment," calling them "the first-born of Satan" (Pol. Phil. 7.1). Importantly, the Christian apologist Irenaeus of Lyon claimed in his book Against Heresies that Polycarp had called the unorthodox Christian thinker Marcion of Sinope "the first-born of Satan". This led P. N. Harrison to conclude that Polycarp was in fact referring to Marcion in this epistle, albeit at an early stage in Marcion's ideological development. Many other scholars, however, have found Harrison's argument to be unconvincing. ==References==