9:1] 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 Beyond the barest historical reference to Petermann's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.

As for "the writers who have specially discussed the Ignatian question
during the last quarter of a century:" Cureton apparently did not think
it worth while to add anything regarding the Armenian version of
Petermann after its appearance; Bunsen refutes Petermann's arguments
in a few pages of his "Hippolytus;" [79:2] Baur, who wrote against
Bunsen and the Curetonian letters, and, according to Dr. Lightfoot's
representation, should have found this "the most formidable argument"
against them, does not anywhere, subsequent to their publication, even
allude to the Armenian Epistles; Ewald, in a note of a couple of lines,
[79:3] refers to Petermann's Epistles as identical with a post-Eusebian
manipulated form of the Epistles which he mentions in a sentence in his
text; Dressel devotes a few unfavourable lines to them; [80:1] Hefele
[80:2] supports them at somewhat greater length; but Bleek, Volkmar,
Tischendorf, Boehringer, Scholten, and others have not thought them
worthy of special notice; at any rate none of these nor any other
writers of any weight have, so far as I am aware, introduced them into
the controversy at all.

The argument itself did not seem to me of sufficient importance to drag
into a discussion already too long and complicated, and I refer the
reader to Bunsen's reply to it, from which, however, I may quote the
following lines:

"But it appears to me scarcely serious to say: there are the Seven
Letters in Armenian, and I maintain, they prove that Cureton's text
is an incomplete extract, because, I think, I have found some Syriac
idioms in the Armenian text! Well, if that is not a joke, it simply
proves, according to ordinary logic, that the Seven Letters must
have once been translated into Syriac. But how can it prove that the
Greek original of this supposed Syriac version is the genuine text,
and not an interpolated and partially forged one?" [80:3]

Dr. Lightfoot blames me for omitting to mention this argument, on the
ground that "a discussion which, while assuming the priority of the
Curetonian letters, ignores this version altogether, has omitted a vital
problem of which it was bound to give an account." Now all this is sheer
misrepresen