2

The Epistle to Diognetus, however, does not reach beyond the tenth chapter, where it ends abruptly. The two remaining chapters belong to some different work, which has been accidentally attached to it, just as in most of the extant MSS the latter part of the Epistle of Polycarp is attached to the former part of the Epistle of Barnabas (see above, pp. 166 sq, 242), so as to form in appearance one work. Probably in this case also an archetypal MS had lost some leaves. Of this there seems to have been some indication in the Strassburg MS itself.

Who then was the author of this latter work? May we not hazard a conjecture which may be taken for what it is worth? The writer was Pantænus, the master of Clement (c. A.D. 180–210). Clearly it is Alexandrian, as its phraseology and its sentiments alike show. More especially he treats the account of the creation and the garden of Eden (c. 12 παράδεισος τρυφῆς κ.τ.λ.) spiritually of the Church of Christ; and Pantænus is singled out with two or three other early fathers by Anastasius of Sinai in two passages as exhibiting this mode of treatment (ed. Migne, p. 860, p. 962). Nor indeed could any one more appropriately use the words (c. 11) ἀποστόλων γενόμενος μαθητὴς γίνομαι διδάσκαλος ἐθνῶν of himself than Pantænus the Apostle of the Indies. The first part of the sentence, ἀποστόλων μαθητής, wrongly understood, has given a place to the Epistle to Diognetus as a whole among the Apostolical Fathers, though (as we have shown) the last two chapters form no part of that Epistle. It is perhaps this very sentence also, or similar language of Pantænus elsewhere, which has led to the impossible statement in Photius (Bibl. 118) that Pantænus himself had listened to the preaching of the apostles.