The gospel according to Ignatius

It was long noted that Ignatius parallels the New Testament at many points, including such sayings of Jesus as now are recorded in the Gospels. It was agreed that Ignatius knew a Pauline collection including Colossians. (The essay we now know as "Ephesians", Ignatius never cited in his own letter to Ephesus; he cited that only to his peer Polycarp. He nowhere cites 2 Thessalonians or the Pastorals.)

It further was agreed he knew Luke 24. It was also agreed that Ignatius knew Matthew . . . or, perhaps NOT. Let's look at the Matthew parallels first.

In 1966 J. Smit Sibinga got "Ignatius and Matthew" published in Novum Testamentum 8(2/4), 263f. That's doi 10.2307/1559995 to you. Scholars dismissed this for four decades (cf. Charles Hill's 2005 dismissal n. 41); only in 2006 do I find Pier F Beatrice taking it seriously.

2 Clement and Justin Martyr quote Jesus from Synoptic Gospels, from apocryphal sources, and from what Papias might call "Cyriac Expositions"; I grew up thinking these were Tatian-like harmonies, intended to replace earlier Gospels, but they were more like to be Muqâtilesque tafâsir. Other Church Fathers quote a Gospel directly. Sibinga points out that we know how Matthew touched at least one of his sources, namely Mark; and that Matthew's touches are not in Ignatius' Matthew parallels. Nor does Papias transmit such Matthean narrative-context as we see in adaptations like POxy 840.

Sibinga instead implicates a cloud of Jesus sayings and anecdotes from which Ignatius and Matthew drew independently. I should further add that the letter to the Trallians traces Jesus' Davidic lineage thus: who was descended from David, and was also of Mary. I'd think that a Lucan Christian would make clearer "from David through Mary". More common is some variant of (for instance the letter to the Ephesians): conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David. That's literally Greek "sperm". 'Tis a man thing. This is what we get in Matthew and especially Paul's Romans 1:3.

If Ignatius knew post-Resurrection accounts, then he knew a Passion also. If Mark, such would set Ignatius on the same level as Matthew... and of Papias.

CORRECTION 5/23/21: Ignatius' genealogy is Pauline which means para-Matthean. Luke is ruled out.