Before we pass to the consideration, indicated at the close of the last lecture, of the Ebionite or properly Judaistic bodies of Palestine, this is the most convenient place for saying a word on the Judaizers of the Ignatian Epistles, as a necessary appendix to our consideration of the Judaizers of the Epistles to the Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles. It is usual to treat the three subjects as forming a closely connected series, each illustrating and confirming the traditional interpretation of the others. As I have found myself constrained to question the Gnosticizing character of the two sets of teachers belonging to the apostolic age, it becomes incumbent on me not to pass over the corroborative evidence for it which is supposed to be afforded by the language of Ignatius.

Are the Judaizers here Docetic?

The facts are simply these. It is allowed on all hands that Ignatius refers to Docetic error and that he refers to Judaistic error. The question is whether these two forms of error were independent of each other or were held simultaneously by the same persons; on the latter supposition we have evidence here of a Docetic form of Judaistic Christianity; in the former we have none. Most critics, of different schools, believe the two forms of error to have been combined.