Hill—The Man Who Needed No Introduction 97
overall situation indicates instead that the elder belonged to the next generation and
did not himself know any apostles (this would mean that the overall situation contra-
dicts and trumps the text). What is it about the overall situation that indicates this? We
are only told that it “seems most unlikely” that this elder would have been an imme-
diate disciple of apostles. It is only unlikely if we first presume that the elder is not
Polycarp, for Irenaeus has already told the reader (III.3.4) that Polycarp had learned
from apostles. The only stated confirmation for this unlikelihood is “the fact that in
all the other passages in which Irenaeus refers to those elders who were disciples of
the apostles,^6 he never claims to have had any personal contact with them.” With this
I would agree entirely. And that is why this passage is different, and why it correlates
with what Irenaeus says elsewhere about Polycarp and does not correlate with what he
says about the plural “elders” he mentions in other places. Those places where he refers
to the teaching of “the elders,” and does not speak of any personal associations with
them, are places where he is either definitely (V.33.3; Proof 61) or most likely (II.22.5;
V.5.1; V.36.1-2) dependent on Papias,^7 and not dependent on him personally but on
his books. On the other hand, in those places where Irenaeus does claim to be one link
away from the apostles (Hae r. III.3; Flor.), that link is Polycarp.
Consequently, I do not see that objections two or three carry any real weight against
the proposed identification of Polycarp and the presbyter. What about one and four?
Irenaeus’s “Childhood Memories”
Moll’s first objection is that the presbyter whose teaching Irenaeus recounted so well
in Book IV could not have been Polycarp, because Irenaeus was too young at the time
when he was acquainted with Polycarp to have understood and remembered so much.
As evidence that Irenaeus’s memory was not as good as he claimed it was, Moll states
that “all the things which Irenaeus actually reports about Polycarp in the letter to Flo-
rinus (or elsewhere) are nothing but very general information, which do not reveal any
personal remembrance of Polycarp’s teachings on Irenaeus’s part, much less provide a
literal quote from them.” First, I would have to disagree; the things Irenaeus says he
remembers about Polycarp in the letter to Florinus as quoted by Moll in his essay (to
which I refer the reader), seem to me to go well beyond the category of “very general
information.” Second, we do have what looks like a fairly literal quote in a portion of
the fragment not quoted by Moll: “O good God, for what times hast thou reserved me,
that I should endure these things?”
Third, the kind of “personal remembrance of Polycarp’s teaching” Moll is asking for
is exactly what I argue exists in Hae r. IV.27-32. This is teaching that Irenaeus remem-
bered from somebody. And it sounds a lot like the kind of thing he had in mind when
he told Florinus, “I used to listen eagerly to these things [which Polycarp taught] even
then by the mercy of God given to me, making notes of them not on papyrus but in my
heart. And always by the grace of God truly do I ruminate on them.”
Now to the issue of Irenaeus’s age. Moll says Irenaeus’s words “presume a ‘child-
like age’ incapable of understanding and remembering what Polycarp taught.” This is
even though Irenaeus immediately goes on to claim forthrightly that he was able to
understand and remember what Polycarp taught. Moll is hardly alone in questioning