Papias of Hierapolis

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 ().

Eusebius adds that Papias was Bishop of Hierapolis around the time of Ignatius of Antioch. In this office Papias was presumably succeeded by Abercius of Hierapolis.

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

Date

The work of Papias is dated by a few modern scholars to about 95–110. 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. 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.

Eusebius refers to Papias only in his third book, and thus seems to date him before the opening of his fourth book in 109. Papias himself knows several New Testament books, whose dates are themselves controversial, and was stated to be informed by John the Evangelist, Aristion, the daughters of Philip and others who had themselves heard the Twelve Apostles. He is also called a companion of the long-lived Polycarp (69–155), Agapius of Hierapolis dates one of his histories to the 12th year of Trajan's rule (AD 110). For all these reasons, Papias is thought to have written around the turn of the 2nd century.

Sources

Papias describes his way of gathering information in his preface:

Papias, then, inquired of travelers passing through Hierapolis what the surviving disciples of Jesus and the elders—those who had personally known the Twelve Apostles—were saying. One of these disciples was Aristion, probably bishop of nearby Smyrna, and another was John the Elder, usually identified (despite Eusebius' protest) with John the Evangelist, residing in nearby Ephesus, of whom Papias was a hearer; Papias frequently cited both. From the daughters of Philip, who settled in Hierapolis, Papias was said to have learned still other traditions.

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. 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.

Fragments

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

1. Preface and John's Preaching

• Preface
• Gospel origins
• Those called children (Book 1)

1. Jesus in Galilee

• The sinful woman
• Paradise and the Church
• The deaths of James and John (Book 2)

1. Jesus in Jerusalem

• The Millennium

1. The Passion

• Agricultural bounty in the Kingdom (Book 4)
• The death of Judas (Book 4)
• The fall of the angels

1. After the Resurrection

• Barsabbas drinking poison
• The raising of Manaem's mother

Gospel origins

Papias provides the earliest extant account of who wrote the Gospels. Eusebius preserves two (possibly) verbatim excerpts from Papias on the origins of the Gospels, one concerning Mark and then another concerning Matthew.

On Mark, Papias cites John the Elder:

The excerpt regarding Matthew says only:

Immediately thereafter, Eusebius states that Papias "employed testimonies from the first epistle of John and from that of Peter likewise"; the exact meaning of this statement is ambiguous.

How to interpret these quotations from Papias has long been a matter of controversy; some scholars have doubted the Elder’s supposition of Peter's involvement in Mark's composition, but his attribution of the Gospel to John Mark is largely accepted.

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. But the parallelism implies a meaning of things said or done, which suits the canonical Gospels well.

The apparent claim that Matthew wrote in Hebrew—which in Greek could refer to either Hebrew or Aramaic—is echoed by many other ancient authorities. Modern scholars have proposed numerous explanations for this assertion, in light of the prevalent view that canonical Matthew was composed in Greek and not translated from Semitic. One theory is that Matthew himself produced firstly a Semitic work and secondly a recension of that work in Greek; Josephus also claimed to write a translation of an Aramaic version of The Jewish War, though both the extant Gospel of Matthew and the War are not translations. Another is that others translated Matthew into Greek rather freely. Another is that Papias simply means "Ἑβραΐδι διαλέκτῳ" as a Hebrew style of Greek. Another possibility forwarded by Maurice Casey is that Papias refers to a distinct work now lost, perhaps a sayings collection like Q or the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews. Others argue Papias faithfully recorded what was related to him, but misunderstood the subjects of narrations with which he was unfamiliar.

As for Mark, the difficulty has been in understanding the relationship described between Mark and Peter—whether Peter recalled from memory or Mark recalled Peter's preaching, and whether Mark translated this preaching into Greek or Latin or merely expounded on it, and if the former, publicly or just when composing the Gospel; modern scholars have explored a range of possibilities. Eusebius, as already mentioned, says that Papias also cited 1 Peter, where Peter speaks of "my son Mark", as corroboration. Within the 2nd century, this relation of Peter to Mark's Gospel is alluded to by Justin and expanded on by Clement of Alexandria.

We do not know what else Papias said about these or the other Gospels—he certainly treated John—but some see Papias as the likely unattributed source of at least two later accounts of the Gospel origins. Bauckham argues that the Muratorian Canon () has drawn from Papias; the extant fragment, however, preserves only a few final words on Mark and then speaks about Luke and John. Hill argues that Eusebius' earlier account of the origins of the four Gospels is also drawn from Papias.

Modern scholars have debated Papias' reliability. 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. 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.

Eusebius had a "low esteem of Papias' intellect", but knew that Irenaeus believed Papias to be a reliable witness to original apostolic traditions. Bart Ehrman concurs with Eusebius, writing, "It is that we cannot really trust him on much of anything." On the other hand, Dale C. Allison notes that in Jewish antiquity less intelligent tanna were actually deemed more reliable given the bright tend to modify what they are given; Papias's alleged lack of intelligence would not have been a disqualification.

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 chiliasm.

Eschatological

Eusebius concludes from the writings of Papias that he was a chiliast, understanding the Millennium as a literal period in which Christ will reign on Earth, and chastises Papias for his literal interpretation of figurative passages, writing that Papias "appears to have been of very limited understanding", and felt that his misunderstanding misled Irenaeus and others. According to fragments, Papias was acquainted with the Revelation of John and held it in high esteem.

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:

Parallels have often been noted between this account and Jewish texts of the period such as 2 Baruch.

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.

Pericope Adulterae

Main article: 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 Gospel according to the Hebrews". Agapius of Hierapolis (10th century) offers a fuller summary of what Papias said here, calling the woman an adulteress. The parallel is clear to the famous Pericope Adulterae (), a problematic passage absent or relocated in many ancient Gospel manuscripts. The parallel is not exact since, in the version known to Papias, the woman "was accused of many sins", unlike the account found in the Pericope Adulterae in which her accusers simply say that she was "caught in the act of adultery." The remarkable fact is that the story is known in some form to such an ancient witness as Papias.

What is less clear is to what extent Eusebius and Agapius are reporting the words of Papias versus the form of the pericope known to them from elsewhere. A wide range of versions have come down to us, in fact. Since the passage in John is virtually unknown to the Greek patristic tradition; Eusebius has cited the only parallel he recognized, from the now-lost Gospel according to the Hebrews, which may be the version quoted by Didymus the Blind.

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 connected with Papias due to Papias' reference to an "Aristion" as a source for the Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord.

Death of Judas

According to a scholium attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea, Papias also related a tale on the grotesque fate of Judas Iscariot:

"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 (Philip of Side and George Hamartolus) cite the second book of Papias as claiming that John was killed by the Jews. However, some modern scholars doubt the reliability of the two sources regarding Papias, while others argue that Papias did speak of John's martyrdom. According to the two sources, Papias presented this as fulfillment of the prophecy of Jesus on the martyrdom of these two brothers.

Barsabbas

Papias relates, on the authority of the daughters of Philip, an event concerning Justus Barsabbas, who according to Acts was one of two candidates proposed to join the Twelve Apostles. The summary in Eusebius tells us that he "drank a deadly poison and suffered no harm," while Philip of Side recounts that he "drank snake venom in the name of Christ when put to the test by unbelievers and was protected from all harm." The account about Justus Barsabbas is followed by a one about the resurrection of the mother of a certain Manaem. This account may be connected to a verse from the longer ending of Mark: "They will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them."

Notes

References

Bibliography

• (with the annotated English translation of the fragments, pp. 105–260).

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