As noted in chapter 6, Ignatius is unlikely to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he would surely have pointed to one in support of his declaration that Jesus had been born of Mary and crucified by Pilate... Nowhere in all of his seven letters, written around the year 107 while he was being brought to Rome for execution, does Ignatius quote a single teaching of Jesus, nor a miracle, nor any detail of the passion under Pilate which he so ardently defends.

All this would suggest that the biography he put forward is of recent vintage, and that few if any other details of Jesus' human life are known to him.

Whether all the circumstances of Ignatius’ condemnation and martyrdom are historical or not, the question of the authenticity of the letters themselves is a separate issue. Traditional scholarship by and large accepts them; radical scholarship since the late 19th century has tended to date them later, perhaps as late as 160. Again, it is not crucial for the purposes of this article to arrive at a firm decision as to authenticity. My own inclination would be to lean away from authenticity but to date them no more than a decade or two after Ignatius’ passing. The main reason for finding a date after the middle of the century unconvincing is the absence in the shorter recension of all but the most basic Gospel data along with elements like apostolic tradition and succession, and the conclusion that the writer was familiar with no written Gospels.