On “Polycarp and Paul” by Kenneth Berding ***

This is one of two books that I've been reading that are essentially a list or study of a given author's sources. Such does not make for very compelling reading, though no doubt it has some value to those looking to learn more about a particular person, and given that we don't really know that much about Polycarp, the second-century bishop of Smyrna, it's probably about the most one could hope from a book-length work on the guy that isn't just a rehash of well-known facts in large print.

Berding studies Polycarp's one surviving work—his letter of the Philippians. Among facts I learned is the theory that the letter is in fact two letters that were subsequently merged. In this idea, which Berding shares with others, Chapters 13 or chapters 13 and 14 are one letter, while the rest of the letter consists of chapters 1-12. Why the idea? Because the latter part doesn't seem to have much to do with the earlier part. It is in the latter part that Polycarp discusses Ignatius, and it was likely a cover letter for the Ignatian letters. The former part is a discourse on righteousness, which seems an odd thing to attach as part of a cover letter to other letters. This discourse was likely written in response to a request for such a document. As such, Polycarp modeled much of his work on Paul's own statements about the subject.

Typically, Polycarp has been dismissed as a theological lightweight. After all, mostly all he does is heavily sort of quote other sources; he doesn't really bring a lot of his own thoughts to the discussion. But Berding shows that this ability to allude to others and so fully actually would have shown one's astuteness at the time that Polycarp was writing; brains were not coming up with something original but imitating well what had been stated before. At this, Polycarp excelled.

Perhaps one of the most useful aspects of Berding's study is the tracking of Polycarp's citations to Paul's letters to Timothy, to which he alludes heavily and often in the context of other Pauline writings, suggesting that Polycarp considered 1 and 2 Timothy to have been written by Paul, contra the many modern critics who dismiss the work as pseudo-epigraphic. The fact also that he quotes from what would come to be the New Testament letters frequently as authoritative as if he were quoting from the Old Testament or the sayings of Jesus suggests that he saw such works as near canonical. Berding further suggests that Polycarp is not as intense regarding the near-term return of Jesus as Paul usually is, suggesting also the gradual bigger focus on present conditions of the Christian.