of four elements”? If we could accept Dr. Taylor’s view and believe that the four Gospels are here alluded to, we should have the earliest testimony to our four canonical Gospels; but it may so reasonably be doubted whether the reference is to four Gospels that the passage cannot be appealed to without hesitation.
But it is the connection of Irenaeus with Polycarp which has always been considered the significant element in his testimony. Eusebius (H. E., v., 20) has preserved a letter written by Irenaeus to Plorinus, in which he reminds him how they had together listened to Polycarp in their youth: “I distinctly remember the incidents of that time better than events of recent occurrence; for the lessons received in childhood, growing with the growth of the soul, become identified with it; so that I can describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he discoursed, and his goings out and his comings in, and his manner of life and his personal appear- ance, and the discourses which he held before the people ; and how he would describe his intercourse with John and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he would relate their words. And what were the accounts he had heard from them about the Lord, and about His miracles, and about His teaching, how Polycarp, as having received them from eye-witnesses of the life of the Word [τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ Λόγου], used to give an account harmonising on all points with the Scriptures.”2 The Scripture in which “the life of the Word” can be traced is the Fourth Gospel. Polycarp does not refer his hearers to that Gospel, because having himself been a pupil of John, he pre- ferred to relate what he had heard from him. But Irenaeus recog- nised that Polycarp’s oral tradition was in harmony with the Gospel. Besides, John lived to the times of Trajan, whose reign began in Α.Ρ. 98, while Polycarp was born not later than Α.Ρ. 70, and was put to death in 156, so that the first thirty years of his life coincided with the last years of John’s, and the last thirty years with the youth of Irenaeus. This being so, can it fairly be said to be likely that after such intimacy with Polycarp as Irenaeus claims, he should not know whether John had written a Gospel or not? Is it conceivable that a young man of an intelligent and inquiring turn of mind should have been in daily communication with a pupil of the Apostle’s, and should never have discovered the origin of the most remarkable document of primitive Christianity ?
But Irenaeus is not the earliest writer who ascribes the Fourth.
* See Taylor’s Hermas and the Four Gospels. Cambridge, 1892. 2 This argument is put in an interesting and conclusive form by Dr. Dale in his Living Christ and the Four Gospels, pp. 149-151, 281-284.