Papias of Hierapolis

Papias (

Life

Very little is known of Papias apart from what can be inferred from his own writings. He is described as "an ancient man who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp" by Polycarp's disciple Irenaeus (c. 180).^[4]

The name Papias was very common in the region, suggesting that he was probably a native of the area.^[6]

Date

The work of Papias is dated by a few modern scholars to about 95–110.^[7][8] Later dates were once argued from two references that now appear to be mistaken. One dating Papias' death to around the death of Polycarp in 164 is actually a mistake for Papylas.^[9] Another unreliable source in which Papias is said to refer to the reign of Hadrian (117–138) seems to have resulted from confusion between Papias and Quadratus of Athens.^[10]

Papias describes his way of gathering information in his preface:[11]

I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.

Papias, then, inquired of travelers passing through Hierapolis what the surviving disciples of Jesus and the elders—those who had personally known the

There is some debate about the intention of Papias' last sentence in the above quotation, "For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice." One side of the debate holds with the longstanding opinion of 20th-century scholarship that in Papias' day written statements were held at a lower value than oral statements.[16] The other side observes that "living voice" was a topos, an established phrase referring to personal instruction and apprenticeship, and thus Papias indicates his preference for personal instruction over isolated book learning.^[17]

Fragments

Despite indications that the work of Papias was still extant in the late Middle Ages,^[18] the full text is now lost. Extracts, however, appear in a number of other writings, some of which cite a book number.^[19] MacDonald proposes the following tentative reconstruction of the five books, following a presumed Matthaean order.^[20]

Gospel origins

Papias provides the earliest extant account of who wrote the

On Mark, Papias cites John the Elder:

The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai,^{[note 1]} but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.

The excerpt regarding Matthew says only:

Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.^{[note 2]}

How to interpret these quotations from Papias has long been a matter of controversy, as the original context for each is missing and the Greek is in several respects ambiguous and seems to employ technical rhetorical terminology. It has been questioned if Papias is even referring to the canonical Gospels bearing those names. However Eusebius, who had the complete text and context before him, understood Papias in these passages to be referring to the canonical Gospels.

The word logia (λόγια)—which also appears in the title of Papias' work—is itself problematic. In non-Christian contexts, the usual meaning was oracles, but since the 19th century it has been interpreted as sayings, which sparked numerous theories about a lost "Sayings Gospel", now called Q, resembling the Gospel of Thomas.^[23] But the parallelism implies a meaning of things said or done, which suits the canonical Gospels well.^[24][25]

The apparent claim that Matthew wrote in Hebrew—which in Greek could refer to either

Irenaeus indeed quotes the fourth book of Papias for an otherwise-unknown saying of Jesus, recounted by John the Evangelist, which Eusebius doubtless has in mind:[41]^[42]

The Lord used to teach about those times and say: "The days will come when vines will grow, each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and in each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when crushed will yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when one of the saints takes hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, "I am better, take me, bless the Lord through me." Similarly a grain of wheat will produce ten thousand heads, and every head will have ten thousand grains, and every grain ten pounds of fine flour, white and clean. And the other fruits, seeds, and grass will produce in similar proportions, and all the animals feeding on these fruits produced by the soil will in turn become peaceful and harmonious toward one another, and fully subject to humankind.… These things are believable to those who believe." And when Judas the traitor did not believe and asked, "How, then, will such growth be accomplished by the Lord?", the Lord said, "Those who live until those times will see."

Parallels have often been noted between this account and Jewish texts of the period such as 2 Baruch.^[43][44]

On the other hand, Papias is elsewhere said to have understood mystically the Hexaemeron (six days of Creation) as referring to Christ and the Church.^[45]

Pericope Adulterae

Eusebius concludes his account of Papias by saying that he relates "another account about a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is found in the

The nearest agreement with "many sins" actually occurs in the Johannine text of Armenian codex Matenadaran 2374 (formerly Ečmiadzin 229); this codex is also remarkable for ascribing the longer ending of Mark to "Ariston the Elder", which is often seen as somehow connected with Papias.^[52][53]

Death of Judas

According to a

Judas did not die by hanging[55] but lived on, having been cut down before he choked to death. Indeed, the Acts of the Apostles makes this clear: "Falling headlong he burst open in the middle and his intestines spilled out."^[56] Papias, the disciple of John, recounts this more clearly in the fourth book of the Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, as follows: "Judas was a terrible, walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh so bloated that he was not able to pass through a place where a wagon passes easily, not even his bloated head by itself. For his eyelids, they say, were so swollen that he could not see the light at all, and his eyes could not be seen, even by a doctor using an optical instrument, so far had they sunk below the outer surface. His genitals appeared more loathsome and larger than anyone else's, and when he relieved himself there passed through it pus and worms from every part of his body, much to his shame. After much agony and punishment, they say, he finally died in his own place, and because of the stench the area is deserted and uninhabitable even now; in fact, to this day one cannot pass that place without holding one's nose, so great was the discharge from his body, and so far did it spread over the ground."

Death of John

Two late sources (

Eusebius had a "low esteem of Papias' intellect".[67] Eusebius, despite his own views on Papias, knew that Irenaeus believed Papias to be a reliable witness to original apostolic traditions.^[68]

We should be hesitant to take much from Eusebius' comment about Papias' intellect though. Eusebius’ use of sources suggests that he himself did not always exercise the soundest of critical judgement, and his negative assessment of Papias was in all likelihood dictated simply by a distrust of

Modern scholars have debated Papias' reliability.[70]^[71] Much discussion of Papias's comments about the Gospel of Mark and Gospel of Matthew is concerned with either showing their reliability as evidence for the origins of these Gospels or with emphasizing their apologetic character in order to discredit their reliability.^[72] Yoon-Man Park cites a modern argument that Papias's tradition was formulated to vindicate the apostolicity of Mark's Gospel, but dismisses this as an unlikely apologetic route unless the Peter-Mark connection Papias described had already been accepted with general agreement by the early church.^[73] Maurice Casey argued that Papias was indeed reliable about a Hebrew collection of sayings by Matthew the Apostle, which he argues was independent of the Greek Gospel of Matthew, possibly written by another Matthew or Matthias in the early church.^[74]

Others argue Papias faithfully recorded what was related to him, but misunderstood the subjects of narrations he was unfamiliar with.^{[75][page needed]}

See also

• Q+/Papias hypothesis

Notes

References