Checking back in on Richard Carrier, we can sum up three theses. 1. Six of Paul's letters are indeed Paul's. 1. Besides those six: 1 Clement and Hebrews also come from the first century. 3. Papias was kind of a moron.
Ignatius of Antioch by contrast was no moron. So why does Ignatius' Christology look so much like Antiochene Orthodoxy today, and so little like Paul?
That - says Carrier, rather said it in 2017 - is because Christianity suffered a terminal-Permian blow. Among the gentiles Pliny the Younger couldn't find many acting Christians in Bithynia, which is northern Anatolia not too far from whither Paul was sending these letters or even his successors, like whoever did Colossians on his behalf. With a collapse in Christian membership, became possible for men like Ignatius to promote an alternative Christianity based on the Gospels; or, at least, whatever Gospels that Ignatius could find. (I suspect he had the Gospel of Peter, rather than something good like Mark.)
BACKDATE 10/29
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