sufficiently discredit him, Dr. Lightfoot attempts to explain away his
language. It would be difficult indeed to show that the words [Greek:
marturein, marturia], already used in that sense in the New Testament,
were not, at the date at which any record of the martyrdom of Ignatius
which Malalas could have had before him was written, employed to express
martyrdom, when applied to such a case, as Dr. Lightfoot indeed has in
the first instance rendered the phrase. Even Zahn, whom Dr. Lightfoot so
implicitly follows, emphatically decides against him on both points.
"The [Greek: epi autou] together with [Greek: tote] can only signify
'coram Trajano' ('in the presence of Trajan'), and [Greek: emarturaese]
only the execution." [110:2] Let anyone simply read over Dr. Lightfoot's
own rendering, which I have quoted above, and he will see that such
quibbles are excluded, and that, on the contrary, Malalas seems
excellently well and directly to have interpreted his earlier authority.

That the statement of Malalas does not agree with the reports of the
Fathers is no real objection, for we have good reason to believe that
none of them had information from any other source than the Ignatian
Epistles themselves, or tradition. Eusebius evidently had not. Irenaeus,
Origen, and some later Fathers tell us nothing about him. Jerome and
Chrysostom clearly take their accounts from these sources. Malalas is
the first who, by his variation, proves that he had another and
different authority before him, and in abandoning the martyr-journey to
Rome, his account has infinitely greater apparent probability. Malalas
lived at Antioch, which adds some weight to his statement. It is
objected that so also did Chrysostom, and at an earlier period, and yet
he repeats the Roman story. This, however, is no valid argument against
Malalas. Chrysostom was too good a churchman to doubt the story of
Epistles so much tending to edification, which were in wide circulation,
and had been quoted by earlier Fathers. It is in no way surprising that,