Ignatian studies since Ussher and Voss have been preoccupied with the issue of the authenticity of the Middle Recension. The expansion of those seven letters widely regarded as genuine, together with six, forged, others, are only in evidence post-Eusebius, whose testimony is only to the Middle Recension. We no longer regard these as distractions deflecting us from the Ignatius of history: the large number of manuscripts often containing both Middle and Long Recensions, with Syriac, Armenian and Arabic versions, are suggestive of a considerable reception history that deserves study in its own right.

Gilliam locates that history in the so-called ‘Arian’ debate in the fourth century: his highly original argument focuses upon the way in which (some) variant readings in the manuscript tradition of the Middle Recension clearly originate in the intention of the author of the Long Recension to modify second-century theology in the light of the controversy between the various groups at that time. The edition of Funk, Patres apostolici, 2 along with that of Lightfoot, sought to establish, respectively, Apolinarian or Arian (Eustachian) elements in the light of which some of the language of the Middle Recension was changed. But Gilliam is claiming more. His textual argument is that the complex textual history of variants in the manuscript tradition and versions shows that we have not established an uncontaminated text of the Middle Recension of which the Long Recension represents the contaminated version. Textual critics themselves now find such an approach to textual criticism inadequate: Elliot advocated, with Gilliam's approval, a thorough-going eclecticism, as ‘the method that allows internal considerations for a reading's originality to be given priority over documentary considerations’ (p. 14).

This new model leads us to abandon the hypothesis that most or all textual variants of the Middle Recension come from the author of the Long Recension and reflect his Arianising theological programme. Rather, genuine though those textual variants may be, they reflect the concerns of Nicene scribes with non-Nicene interpretations of Ignatius’ genuine, second-century epistles. The interpolator and forger however is non-Nicene and assails the emergence of fourth-century orthodoxy in terms of which Ignatius’ letters are being reshaped. Both the Middle Recension and the Long Recension are witnesses therefore to the use of Ignatius in fourth-century theological controversies (p. 48).

Gilliam has now to show that the textual variants of the Middle Recension cannot be attributed to a second-century scribe correcting errors in his contemporary situation. One of the examples is the emendation, in Ignatius, Magnesians 8.2, of the ‘word proceeding from silence’ (‘λόγος ἀπὸ σιγῆς προελθών’) (Armenian and Arabic versions, and Severus of Antioch) to the ‘eternal word not proceeding from silence’ (‘λόγος αΐδιος οὐκ ἀπὸ σιγῆς προελθών’) (Codex Mediceo-Laurentianus 57.7 and the Latin version). The purpose of the emendator here is not to correct any suggestion of Valentinianism or Sethianianism but rather its apparent support for Marcellus of Ancyra, whose followers assert one hypostasis, and claim that the word within only can be heard when spoken: ‘eternal not’ (‘αΐδιος οὐκ’) affirms that the ‘word’ (‘λόγος’) that proceeds from God is eternal and does not exist for simply a phase in salvation history. The interpolator is not to be identified with the forger who expresses the point quite differently. He speaks rather of the ‘word not simply uttered [λόγος οὐ ῥητὸς] but of real substance [ἀλλ᾽οὐσιώδης]’ that is ‘substance of the divine energy undergoing birth’ (‘ἐνεργείας θεϊκῆς οὐσία γεννητή’). Gilliam appeals to Lienhard's classification and sees the interpolator as providing a miahypostatic reading of the Middle Recensions that the forger converts into a dyohypostatic reading, thus confirming that interpolator and forger are different voices in a theological debate (pp. 34–5).

In this example a shared hostility to Marcellan theology is being expressed differently. As generally Gilliam's thesis is of a theological distinction between the interpolator and the forger, I cite a further example in Magnesians 7.1. Here there is a clear pro-Nicene qualification to a second-century subordinationism in the qualificatory emendation ‘ἑνωμένος ὤν’ to a description of the Son as subordinate to the Father. The Long Recension omits such an emendation because it does not share such Nicene convictions (p. 41).

Gilliam wishes to refute James D. Smith's thesis that Ignatius was an obscure figure until the discovery of his relics in the cemetery at Antioch outside the Daphnitic gate in ad 364–73 (pp. 190–5). Thus Gilliam argues that the Christology of the Long Recension is related to that of the Ekthesis Makrostichos and composed around 344 (pp. 115–32). The nature of creedal confessions is that they contain a variety of voices brought together in harmony, and this fits nicely the claim that the Middle and Long Recensions have different authors representing different positions in the fourth-century Christological debate. Thus Gilliam must reject the various cases made for a single author by various scholars: Acacius (Zahn), Evagrius Ponticus (Weijenborg) and Eusebius of Emesa (Perler and others) (pp. 109–18). This is particularly true of his rejection of my preferred candidate for single authorship, the otherwise unknown Julian, author of a commentary on Job whose text Hagedorn has edited (p. 104–7).

The connections between the Long Recension, the commentary on Job and the Apostolic constitutions provide a firm basis for the construction of an author profile, locating the Christological assumptions within a single authorial mind. Gilliam denies the cogency of these connections in such language as ‘they are not remarkable’, some examples are ‘more convincing than the others’ but ‘do not represent overwhelming evidence’ for an identity of author (pp. 106–7). In view of both his own parallels between contemporary literature and the interpolations, and indeed his attempts to show that there was a more extensive history of references to Ignatius than Smith's thesis admits, it must be said that Gilliam himself rests his case upon a judgement about degrees of what is ‘remarkable’ and evidence that is at best cogent but less than ‘overwhelming’.

The critical consequences of Julian's authorship is that the origin of the theology of the Long Recension is Anhomoean, since for Julian God does not have anyone ‘of identical’ or ‘similar’ substance to him, ‘neither … of one substance … nor of similar substance’ (‘οὔτε … ὁμοούσιόν… οὔτε ὁμοιούσιον’) (on Job 37). It is in the light of this Christological background that pseudo-Ignatius Christology should be expounded.

Notwithstanding these critical reflections, Gilliam has produced an outstanding study of the pseudo-Ignatian correspondence that future studies will need to address.