A Bishop of Antioch
Ignatius led the church at Antioch in Syria, the city where the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26) and from which Paul and Barnabas were sent out (Acts 13:1–3). Almost everything we know about him comes from seven short letters he wrote on his way to death. He called himself Theophorus, the God-bearer. Eusebius, writing two centuries later, counts him the second bishop of Antioch after one Evodius, in a line he traced back to Peter.
Later writers filled the silence with legends. One tradition made him a disciple of the apostle John; another, much later, identified him with the little child Jesus set in the midst of His disciples (Matthew 18:2). Neither has early support. The longer accounts of his martyrdom that circulated in the Middle Ages are also late and unreliable.
We do not know how long he served or what charge was brought against him. Sometime in the reign of Trajan (98–117) he was arrested at Antioch, condemned to the beasts, and sent under military guard to Rome to die in the arena. Eusebius placed his death around 107, and many scholars prefer a date near 110.
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