Ulric Neisser and Lisa K. Libby, “Remembering Life Experiences,” in Endel Tulving and Fergus I. M.
Craik, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 317. They are citing the
title and conclusion of the work of D. C. Rubin et al., “Things Learned Early in Adulthood are Remembered
Best,” Memory and Cognition 26 (1998): 3–19. In this study, “early in adulthood” means from about age ten
to thirty.
Rubin et al., “Things Learned,” 7. They cite a 1991 study by W. R. Mackavey, J. E. Malley, and A. J.
Stewart, “Remembering Autobiographically Consequential Experiences: Content Analysis of Psychologists’
Accounts of their Lives,” Psychology and Aging 6 (1991): 50–59, that found that “even for these carefully com-
posed, well-contemplated intellectual autobiographies, events and experiences from early adulthood, and
especially from the college years, were mentioned most often” (8). In the words of the authors, “The greatest
concentration of memories for our subjects did not occur during the recent time of their lives, but rather some
fifty or so years earlier” (“Remembering,” 57).
Rubin, et al., “Things Learned,” 16.
Ibid.
For example, Asher Koriat, “Control Processes in Remembering,” in Tulving and Craik, The Oxford
Handbook of Memory, 338, “as far as intentional retrieval is concerned, it would seem that practice retrieving
an item from memory is what makes retrieval of that item more automatic.”
It does not appear to me that Irenaeus stayed up nights looking for opportunities to throw Polycarp’s
name around in order to bolster his arguments or adorn his own reputation. In the entire five books of
Against Heresies, he mentions Polycarp by name in only two places. One is the section III.3.4 and the other
is a passing reference in V.33.4 where he merely says that Papias was “a companion of Polycarp.” He does not
mention Polycarp at all in his Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, though he does speak there of the importance
of following the elders. He mentions Polycarp, of course, in his letter to Florinus, but both he and Florinus
had known the man; and he mentions Polycarp in his letter to Victor on the paschal controversy, when he
informs Victor of what happened when one of his predecessors in Rome was visited by Polycarp and the two
bishops disagreed on paschal observance. In this letter, at least in the fragment we have, Irenaeus does not
mention that he personally knew Polycarp (doubtless Victor knew that already). There are several instances
in which Irenaeus cites an older Christian teacher (I.praef.2; I.13.3; I.15.6; III.17.4; IV.41.2; V.17.4), one or
more of which might be a reference to Polycarp (see Hill, Lost Teaching, 68–71). But while his respect for this
teacher, or these teachers, is clear, in none of these places does Irenaeus give the teacher a name. It is as if
Irenaeus thought name dropping would somehow be unbecoming. And Irenaeus’s practice is not so different
from that of other students who had revered Christian teachers in the second century. Clement of Alexandria
speaks of Pantaenus as a renowned teacher, but we have next to nothing that he passed in his master’s name
(in what survives; the lost Hypotyposeis may have been different). The same may be said of Tatian and his
teacher Justin.
The back-referencing continues with even greater specificity in the next paragraph, IV.32.2, where he
reminds the reader of the apostles’ teaching of one God revealed in both testaments, “as I have proved in the
third book from the very teaching of the apostles.”
Irenaeus and the Noncanonical Gospels
The edition of the Adversus haereses that is used as the basis for the discussion in this paper is Irénée
de Lyon, Contre les Hérésies, édition critique par A. Rousseau, L. Doutreleau (B. Hemmerdinger, C. Mercier),
Sources chrétiennes 100 (2 vols.), 152, 153, 210, 211, 263, 264, 293, 294 (Paris: Cerf, 1965–1982). However,
the English translations used throughout are based on that by J. Keble in the Library of Fathers (1872), and
by A. Roberts and W. H. Rambaut in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Edinburgh, 1868–1869, reprint Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans: 1979).
The existence of the text of the Gospel of Judas was announced to the scholarly world previously at the
Eighth Congress of the International Association for Coptic Studies in Paris on July 1, 2004.
See R. Kasser, M. Meyer, and G. Wurst, eds., “The Gospel of Judas,” with additional commentary by Bart
Ehrman, National Geographic (May 2006): 78–95 (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006); H. Krosney,
The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006).
The Coptic text is available in two critical editions of Codex Tchacos: J. Brankaer and H.-G. Bethge, eds.,
Codex Tchacos: Texte und Analysen, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
161 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007); and R. Kasser, G. Wurst, M. Meyer, and F. Gaudard, eds., The Gospel of Judas
