Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume I/Church History of Eusebius/Book III/Chapter 39

The Writings of Papias.

1. are extant five books of Papias, which bear the title Expositions of Oracles of the Lord. &#955;&#959;&#947;&#8055;&#969;&#957; &#954;&#965;&#961;&#953;&#945;&#954;&#8182;&#957; &#7952;&#958;&#951;&#947;&#8053;&#963;&#949;&#953;&#962;. This work is no longer extant, but a number of fragments of it have been preserved by Iren&#230;us, Eusebius, and others, which are published in the various editions of the Apostolic Fathers (see especially Gebhardt, Harnack and Zahn&#8217;s edition, Vol. I. Appendix), and by Routh in his ''Rel. Sacr&#230;,'' I. p. 3&#8211;16. English translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers (Am. ed.), Vol. I. p. 151 sq. The exact character of the work has been long and sharply disputed. Some contend that it was a record of oral traditions in regard to the Lord which Papias had gathered, together with a commentary upon these traditions, others that it was a complete Gospel, others that it was a commentary upon an already existing Gospel or Gospels. The last is the view which accords best with the language of Eusebius, and it is widely accepted, though there is controversy among those who accept it as to whether the Gospel or Gospels which he used are to be identified with either of our canonical Gospels. But upon this question we cannot dwell at this point. Lightfoot, who believes that a written text lay at the base of Papias&#8217; work, concludes that the work contained, first, the text; secondly, &#8220;the interpretations which explained the text, and which were the main object of the work&#8221;; and thirdly, the oral traditions, which &#8220;were subordinate to the interpretation&#8221; (Contemporary Review, 1875, II. p. 389). This is probably as good a description of the plan of Papias&#8217; work as can be given, whatever decision may be reached as to the identity of the text which he used with any one of our Gospels. Lightfoot has adduced strong arguments for his view, and has discussed at length various other views which it is not necessary to repeat here. On the significance of the word &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945;, see below, note 26. As remarked there, &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945; cannot be confined to words or discourses only, and therefore the &#8220;oracles&#8221; which Papias expounded in his work may well have included, so far as the title is concerned, a complete Gospel or Gospels. In the absence of the work itself, however, we are left entirely to conjecture, though it must be remarked that in the time of Papias at least some of our Gospels were certainly in existence and already widely accepted. It is difficult, therefore, to suppose that if written documents lay at the basis of Papias&#8217; work, as we have concluded that they did, that they can have been other than one or more of the commonly accepted Gospels. But see Lightfoot&#8217;s article already referred to for a discussion of this question. The date of the composition of Papias&#8217; work is now commonly fixed at about the middle of the second century, probably nearer 130 than 150 The books and articles that have been written upon this work are far too numerous to mention. Besides the article by Lightfoot in the Contemporary Review, which has been already referred to, we should mention also Salmon&#8217;s article in the ''Dict. of Christian Biography, Schleiermacher&#8217;s essay in the Studien und Kritiken,'' 1832, p. 735 sq.,&#8212;the first critical discussion of Papias&#8217; testimony in regard to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and still valuable,&#8212;dissertations by Weiffenbach, 1874 and 1878, and by Leimbach, 1875, with reviews of the last two in various periodicals, notably the articles by Hilgenfeld in his ''Zeitschrift f&#252;r wiss. Theol.'' 1875, 1877, 1879. See also p. 389, note, below. On the life of Papias, see above, chap. 36, note 2. Iren&#230;us makes mention of these as the only works written by him, in the following words: &#8220;These things are attested by Papias, an ancient man who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, in his fourth book. For five books have been written by him.&#8221; These are the words of Iren&#230;us.

2. But Papias himself in the preface to his discourses by no means declares that he was himself a hearer and eye-witness of the holy apostles, but he shows by the words which he uses that he received the doctrines of the faith from those who were their friends. The justice of this criticism, passed by Eusebius upon the statement of Iren&#230;us, has been questioned by many, who have held that, in the passage quoted just below from Papias, the same John is meant in both cases. See the note of Schaff in his Church History, II. p. 697 sq. A careful exegesis of the passage from Papias quoted by Eusebius seems, however, to lead necessarily to the conclusion which Eusebius draws, that Papias refers to two different persons bearing the same name,&#8212;John. In fact, no other conclusion can be reached, unless we accuse Papias of the most stupid and illogical method of writing. Certainly, if he knew of but one John, there is no possible excuse for mentioning him twice in the one passage. On the other hand, if we accept Eusebius&#8217; interpretation, we are met by a serious difficulty in the fact that we are obliged to assume that there lived in Asia Minor, early in the second century a man to whom Papias appeals as possessing exceptional authority, but who is mentioned by no other Father; who is, in fact, otherwise an entirely unknown personage. And still further, no reader of Papias&#8217; work, before the time of Eusebius, gathered from that work, so far as we know, a single hint that the John with whom he was acquainted was any other than the apostle John. These difficulties are so serious that they have led many to deny that Papias meant to refer to a second John, in spite of his apparently clear reference to such a person. Among those who deny this second John&#8217;s existence are such scholars as Zahn and Salmon. (Compare, for instance, the latter&#8217;s able article on Joannes the Presbyter, in the Dict. of Christian Biography.) In reply to their arguments, it may be said that the silence of all other early writers does not necessarily disprove the existence of a second John; for it is quite conceivable that all trace of him should be swallowed up in the reputation of his greater namesake who lived in the same place. Moreover, it is quite conceivable that Papias, writing for those who were well acquainted with both Johns, may have had no suspicion that any one would confound the presbyter with the apostle, and would imagine that he was referring to the latter when he was speaking of his personal friend John; and therefore he would have no reason for stating expressly that there were two Johns, and for expressly distinguishing the one from the other. It was, then, quite natural that Iren&#230;us, a whole generation later, knowing that Polycarp was a disciple of the apostle John, and finding constant mention of a John in Papias&#8217; works, should simply take for granted that the same John was meant; for by his time the lesser John may easily, in the minds of most people, have become lost in the tradition of his greater namesake. In view of these possibilities, it cannot be said that the silence of other Fathers in regard to this John is fatal to his existence; and if this is so, we are hardly justified in doing such violence to Papias&#8217; language as is required to identify the two Johns mentioned by him in the passage quoted below. Among those who accept Eusebius&#8217; conclusion, that Papias refers to two different persons, are such scholars as Tischendorf, Donaldson, Westcott and Lightfoot. If Eusebius has recovered for us from the ancient history of the Church an otherwise unknown personage, it will not be the only time that he has corrected an error committed by all his predecessors. In this case, as in a number of other cases, I believe Eusebius&#8217; wide information, sharp-sightedness, and superiority to the trammels of traditionalism receive triumphant vindication and we may accept his conclusion that Papias was personally acquainted with a second John, who was familiarly known as &#8220;the Presbyter,&#8221; and thus distinguished from the apostle John, who could be called a presbyter or elder only in the general sense in which all the leading men of his generation were elders (see below, note 6), and could not be designated emphatically as &#8220;the presbyter.&#8221; In regard to the connection of this &#8220;presbyter John&#8221; with the Apocalypse, see below, note 14. But although Papias distinguishes, as we may conclude, between two Johns in the passage referred to, and elsewhere, according to Eusebius, pronounces himself a hearer of the second John, it does not necessarily follow that Iren&#230;us was mistaken in saying that he was a hearer of the apostle John; for Iren&#230;us may have based his statement upon information received from his teacher, Polycarp, the friend of Papias, and not upon the passage quoted by Eusebius, and hence Papias may have been a hearer of both Johns. At the same time, it must be said that if Papias had been a disciple of the apostle John, he could scarcely have failed to state the fact expressly somewhere in his works; and if he had stated it anywhere, Eusebius could hardly have overlooked it. The conclusion, therefore, seems most probable that Eusebius is right in correcting Iren&#230;us&#8217; statement, and that the latter based his report upon a misinterpretation of Papias&#8217; own words. In that case, we have no authority for speaking of Papias as a disciple of John the apostle.

3. He says: &#8220;But I shall not hesitate also to put down for you along with my interpretations whatsoever things I have at any time learned carefully from the elders and carefully remembered, guaranteeing their truth. For I did not, like the multitude, take pleasure in those that speak much, but in those that teach the truth; not in those that relate strange commandments, but in those that deliver the commandments given by the Lord to faith, and springing from the truth itself.

4. If, then, any one came, who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elders,&#8212;what Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by James, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. For I did not think that what was to be gotten from the books would profit me as much as what came from the living and abiding voice.&#8221;

5. It is worth while observing here that the name John is twice enumerated by him. The first one he mentions in connection with Peter and James and Matthew and the rest of the apostles, clearly meaning the evangelist; but the other John he mentions after an interval, and places him among others outside of the number of the apostles, putting Aristion before him, and he distinctly calls him a presbyter.

6. This shows that the statement of those is true, who say that there were two persons in Asia that bore the same name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which, even to the present day, is called John&#8217;s. It is important to notice this. For it is probable that it was the second, if one is not willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Revelation, which is ascribed by name to John. A similar suggestion had been already made by Dionysius in the passage quoted by Eusebius in Bk. VII. chap. 25, and Eusebius was undoubtedly thinking of it when he wrote these words. The suggestion is a very clever one, and yet it is only a guess, and does not pretend to be more. Dionysius concludes that the Apocalypse must have been written by some person named John, because it testifies to that fact itself; but the style, and other internal indications, lead him to think that it cannot have been written by the author of the fourth Gospel, whom he assumes to be John the apostle. He is therefore led to suppose that the Apocalypse was written by some other John. He does not pretend to say who that John was, but thinks it must have been some John that resided in Asia; and he then adds that there were said to be two tombs in Ephesus bearing the name of John,&#8212;evidently implying, though he does not say it, that he is inclined to think that this second John thus commemorated was the author of the Apocalypse. It is plain from this that he had no tradition whatever in favor of this theory, that it was solely an hypothesis arising from critical difficulties standing in the way of the ascription of the book to the apostle John. Eusebius sees in this suggestion a very welcome solution of the difficulties with which he feels the acceptance of the book to be beset, and at once states it as a possibility that this &#8220;presbyter John,&#8221; whom he has discovered in the writings of Papias, may have been the author of the book. But the authenticity of the Apocalypse was too firmly established to be shaken by such critical and theological difficulties as influenced Dionysius, Eusebius, and a few others, and in consequence nothing came of the suggestion made here by Eusebius. In the present century, however, the &#8220;presbyter John&#8221; has again played an important part among some critics as the possible author of certain of the Johannine writings, though the authenticity of the Apocalypse has (until very recently) been so commonly accepted even by the most negative critics that the &#8220;presbyter John&#8221; has not figured at all as the author of it; nor indeed is he likely to in the future.

7. And Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he received the words of the apostles from those that followed them, but says that he was himself a hearer of Aristion and the presbyter John. At least he mentions them frequently by name, and gives their traditions in his writings. These things we hope, have not been uselessly adduced by us.

8. But it is fitting to subjoin to the words of Papias which have been quoted, other passages from his works in which he relates some other wonderful events which he claims to have received from tradition.

9. That Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters has been already stated. But it must be noted here that Papias, their contemporary, says that he heard a wonderful tale from the daughters of Philip. For he relates that in his time one rose from the dead. And he tells another wonderful story of Justus, surnamed Barsabbas: that he drank a deadly poison, and yet, by the grace of the Lord, suffered no harm.

10. The Book of Acts records that the holy apostles after the ascension of the Saviour, put forward this Justus, together with Matthias, and prayed that one might be chosen in place of the traitor Judas, to fill up their number. The account is as follows: &#8220;And they put forward two, Joseph, called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias; and they prayed and said.&#8221;

11. The same writer gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten tradition, certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and some other more mythical things.

12. To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures.

13. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Iren&#230;us and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views.

14. Papias gives also in his own work other accounts of the words of the Lord on the authority of Aristion who was mentioned above, and traditions as handed down by the presbyter John; to which we refer those who are fond of learning. But now we must add to the words of his which we have already quoted the tradition which he gives in regard to Mark, the author of the Gospel.

15. &#8220;This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. Papias is the first one to connect the Gospel of Mark with Peter, but the tradition recorded by him was universally accepted by those who came after him (see above, Bk. II. chap. 15, note 4). The relation of this Gospel of Mark to our canonical gospel has been a very sharply disputed point, but there is no good reason for distinguishing the Gospel referred to here from our second Gospel which corresponds excellently to the description given by Papias. Compare the remarks of Lightfoot, ibid. p. 393 sq. We know from other sources (e.g. Justin Martyr&#8217;s Dial. c. 106) that our second Gospel was in existence in any case before the middle of the second century, and therefore there is no reason to suppose that Papias was thinking of any other Gospel when he spoke of the Gospel written by Mark as the interpreter of Peter. Of course it does not follow from this that it was actually our second Gospel which Mark wrote, and of whose composition Papias here speaks. He may have written a Gospel which afterward formed the basis of our present Gospel, or was one of the sources of the synoptic tradition as a whole; that is, he may have written what is commonly known as the &#8220;Ur-Marcus&#8221; (see above, Bk. II. chap. 15, note 4). As to that, we cannot decide with absolute certainty, but we may say that Papias certainly understood the tradition which he gives to refer to our Gospel of Mark. The exact significance of the word &#7953;&#961;&#956;&#951;&#957;&#949;&#965;&#964;&#8053;&#962; as used in this sentence has been much disputed. It seems best to give it its usual significance,&#8212;the significance which we attach to the English word &#8220;interpreter.&#8221; See Weiffenbach, ibid. p. 37 sq. It may be, supposing the report to be correct, that Peter found it advantageous to have some one more familiar than himself with the language of the people among whom he labored to assist him in his preaching. What language it was for which he needed an interpreter we cannot say. We might think naturally of Latin, but it is not impossible that Greek or that both languages were meant; for Peter, although of course possessed of some acquaintance with Greek, might not have been familiar enough with it to preach in it with perfect ease. The words &#8220;though not indeed in order&#8221; (&#959;&#8016; &#956;&#8051;&#957;&#964;&#959;&#953; &#964;&#8364;&#958;&#949;&#953;) have also caused considerable controversy. But they seem to refer chiefly to a lack of chronological arrangement, perhaps to a lack of logical arrangement also. The implication is that Mark wrote down without regard to order of any kind the words and deeds of Christ which he remembered. Lightfoot and most other critics have supposed that this accusation of a &#8220;lack of order&#8221; implies the existence of another written Gospel, exhibiting a different order, with which Papias compares it (e.g. with the Gospel of Matthew, as Weiss, Bleck, Holtzmann, and others think; or with John, as Lightfoot, Zahn, Renan, and others suppose). This is a natural supposition, but it is quite possible that Papias in speaking of this lack of order is not thinking at all of another written Gospel, but merely of the order of events which he had received from tradition as the true one. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord&#8217;s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely.&#8221; These things are related by Papias concerning Mark.

16. But concerning Matthew he writes as follows: &#8220;So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able.&#8221; On the tradition that Matthew wrote a Hebrew gospel, see above, chap. 24, note 5. Our Greek Gospel of Matthew was certainly in existence at the time Papias wrote, for it is quoted in the epistle of Barnabas, which was written not later than the first quarter of the second century. There is, therefore, no reason for assuming that the Gospel of Matthew which Papias was acquainted with was a different Gospel from our own. This, however, does not prove that the &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945; which Matthew wrote (supposing Papias&#8217; report to be correct) were identical with, or even of the same nature as our Gospel of Matthew. It is urged by many that the word &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945; could be used only to describe a collection of the words or discourses of the Lord, and hence it is assumed that Matthew wrote a work of this kind, which of course is quite a different thing from our first Gospel. But Lightfoot has shown (ibid. p. 399 sq.) that the word &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945;, &#8220;oracles,&#8221; is not necessarily confined to a collection of discourses merely, but that it may be used to describe a work containing also a narrative of events. This being the case, it cannot be said that Matthew&#8217;s &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945; must necessarily have been something different from our present Gospel. Still our Greek Matthew is certainly not a translation of a Hebrew original, and hence there may be a long step between Matthew&#8217;s Hebrew &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945; and our Greek Gospel. But if our Greek Matthew was known to Papias, and if it is not a translation of a Hebrews original, then one of two alternatives follows: either he could not accept the Greek Matthew, which was in current use (that is, our canonical Matthew), or else he was not acquainted with the Hebrew Matthew. Of the former alternative we have no hint in the fragments preserved to us, while the latter, from the way in which Papias speaks of these Hebrew &#955;&#8057;&#947;&#953;&#945;, seems highly probable. It may, therefore, be said to be probable that Papias, the first one that mentions a Hebrew Matthew, speaks not from personal knowledge, but upon the authority of tradition only. And the same writer uses testimonies from the first Epistle of John and from that of Peter likewise. And he relates another story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. These things we have thought it necessary to observe in addition to what has been already stated.