I exhort you to do nothing from
partisanship but in accordance with Christ's teaching. For I heard some say,
"If I do not find (it) in the archives, I do not believe (it to be) in the
gospel." And when I said, "It is written," they answered me,
"That is just the question." but for me the archives are Jesus
Christ, the inviolable archives are his cross and death and his resurrection
and faith through him—in which, through your prayers, I want to be justified.
(To the Philadelphians, 8:2)
His opponents say that if they do
not find it in the OT, they do not "believe (it to be) in the
gospel." . . . Any lingering doubt as to whether "archives" can
mean the Scriptures (OT) is set aside by the curiously neglected parallel
provided by Josephus. In his Contra Apionem (1.29) the Jewish historian
treats the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. 1.37-38) as literary phenomena parallel to
the δημοσιαι αναγραφαι ("public records") of the Creeks (1.20-22) and
of the societies of the Ancient Near East (1.28; cf. 1.9). Such public records,
of course, are archives. This is confirmed by the fact that elsewhere Josephus
employs the term "archives" itself with particular reference to the
Phoenician records (C. Apion. 1.143; cf. Ant. 8.144; 9.283, 287).
11 (In C. Apion. 1.31 and 1.35 the term "archives" is used to
refer to the sources for priestly genealogies, but these play a subordinate
role to the Scriptures as public records.) Note that Philo also refers to the
Scriptures as αναγραφαι ("records") or ιεραι αναγραφαι ("sacred
records"). Ignatius replies that in fact, "It is written." that
is the standard formula used to introduce quotations from Scripture. (a)
Ignatius uses the expression only in reference to the OT (cf. Eph. 5.3; Mag.
12), and there is no convincing evidence that he puts any other source on the
same level with it. (William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary
on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch [Hermeneia-A Critical and Historical
Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985], 207-8; Ephesians
5:2 reads " . . . For it is written, 'God resists the arrogrant' . . .
"; Magnesians 12 reads " . . . I know that you blush—as it is
written, 'the just man is his own accuser.'")