apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

588 EPISTLE OE S. POLYCARP.
Irengeus speaks of it as happening 'on a certain occasion' (kol auros Se
o IIoAvKapTros MapKiwvt Trore €ts avTw iXBovri 6\f/iM k.t.X.).
It Stands
immediately after the account of the corresponding interview between
S. John and Cerinthus, as related by Polycarp himself, and has no
necessary connexion with Polycarp's visit to Rome. It might therefore
have happened in Asia Minor as early as (say) a. d. 130, when
Marcion first
began to promulgate his doctrines. But even if we
to the Roman visit and therefore to the year 154, the repetition
assign it
of the same phrase at this long interval creates no real difficulty.
Would not the coincidence, so far as it
goes, appear to any ordinary
judicial mind rather to point to Polycarp as the author of the epistle ;
for the two facts come to us on independent authority
— the one from
oral tradition through Irenaeus, the other in a written document older than
Irengeus
Or, if the one statement arose out of the other, the converse
relation is much more probable. Irenaeus, as he tells us in the context,
was acquainted with the epistle, and it is quite possible
that in repeating
the story of Polycarp's interview with Marcion he inadvertently
imported into it the expression which he had read in the epistle. But
the independence of the two is far more probable. As a fact, men do
repeat the
same expressions again and again, and this throughout long
periods of their lives. Such forms of speech arise out of their idiosyncrasies,
and so become part of them. This is a matter of common
observation, and in the case of Polycarp we happen to be informed
incidentally that he had a habit of repeating favourite expressions.
Irengeus in his Epistle to Florinus (see above, p. 445) mentions the
exclamation 'O good God', as one of these phrases (to (Tvv7}0(.