He was repeating what he heard. Were you to reference an entire letter, as recited by Polycarp, it would be different. But these various bits and pieces were passed along and communicated through oral tradition. There were certain letters written to particular churches but you have yet to cite one.
“He was repeating what he heard.”
So, the phrase “it is said in these Scriptures,” followed by a quotation of them, is just a repetition of what he heard were written in Ephesians!?
” Were you to reference an entire letter, as recited by Polycarp, it would be different.”
So, the only proof you’d accept, is if Polycarp transcribed the entirety of Ephesians!?
And the hits just keep coming! I can quote scripture fairly well, used to be much known for it (even suffered for it, at times), but I cannot quote a single entire "book" or even chapter...even as I once almost had Acts 2 down pat.
One needn't be proven guilty of word-for-word copying of entire pages to today be found guilty of plagarism. A few sentences will do. Quoting sentence fragments leans more towards having read the sentences themselves, though in this instance, it may be that much of what was most expounded upon, most emphasized, repeated, thus remembered by hearers, was the same phrasing otherwise used in NT written works, also. It's not only just as likely, but MORE likely, for most of that which is now accepted as NT canon, has present datings of being written, preceding Polycarp's own birth, or else coming about during his own lifetime.
Unless you are still on the jag suggesting there were no original autographs(?) (at least for some NT books?) and the "books" were all assembled at some later time, not [written] by the authors whom are commonly attributed to having written them in the first place?
Scrolls can be "books" in a sense. You know...like the sense we are using here, when we say "books"?