Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/818

 Aristion and John said in his own hearing. Eusebius certainly understands Papias to claim to have been a hearer of this John and Aristion. The word "elders" is ordinarily used of men of a former generation, and would be most naturally understood here of men of the first generation of Christians; if it were not that in the second clause the title seems to be refused to Aristion, who is nevertheless described as a disciple (by which we must understand a personal disciple) of our Lord; and as those mentioned in the first group are all apostles, the word "elder," as Papias used it, may have included, besides antiquity, the idea of official dignity. As to whether the John mentioned with Aristion is different from John the apostle previously mentioned, see (444).

The fragment quoted enables us to fix within certain limits the date of Papias. He is evidently separated by a whole generation from the apostolic age; he describes himself as living when it was not exceptional to meet persons who had. been hearers of the apostles, and (if we understand him rightly) he had met two who professed to have actually seen our Lord Himself. Eusebius tells that Philip the apostle (some suppose that he ought to have said Philip the deacon) came to reside at Hierapolis with his daughters; and that Papias, on the authority of these daughters, tells a story of Philip raising a man from the dead. Eusebius certainly understood Papias to describe himself as contemporary with those daughters and as having heard the story from them. If these were they whom St. Luke describes as prophesying at Caesarea in 58, and if they were young women then, they might have been still alive at Hierapolis between 100 and 110. But as Papias speaks of his inquiries in the past tense, a considerable time had probably elapsed before he published the results. On the whole, we shall not be far wrong in dating the work c. 130.

Papias evidently lived after the rise of Gnosticism and was not unaffected by the controversies occasioned by it. Strong asceticism was a feature of some of the earliest Gnostic sects; and their commandments, "Touch not, taste not, handle not," may well have been "the strange commandments" to which Papias refers. Lightfoot is probably right in thinking that the sarcasm in the phrase "those who have so very much to say" may have been aimed at the work on the Gospel by Basilides in 24 books, and some similar productions of the Gnostic schools of which the later book Pistis Sophia is a sample.

Of the traditions recorded by Papias, what has given rise to most discussion and has been the foundation of most theories is what he relates about the Gospels of SS. Matthew and Mark, which he is the first to mention by name. Concerning Mark he says, "This also the elder [John] said: Mark having become the interpreter of Peter wrote accurately everything that he remembered of the things that were either said or done by Christ; but however not in order. For he neither heard the Lord nor had been a follower of His; but afterwards, as I said, was a follower of Peter, who framed his teaching according to the needs [of his hearers], but not with the design of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses [or oracles]. Thus Mark committed no error in thus writing down some things as he remembered them. For he took heed to one thing: not to omit any of the things he had heard, or to set down anything falsely therein." Concerning Matthew, all that remains of what Papias says is, "So then Matthew composed the oracles in Hebrew, and every one interpreted them as he could." For a long time no one doubted that Papias here spoke of our Gospels of SS. Matthew and Mark; and mainly on the authority of these passages was founded the general belief of the Fathers, that St. Matthew's Gospel had been originally written in Hebrew, and St. Mark's founded on the teaching of Peter. But some last-century critics contended that our present Gospels do not answer the descriptions given by Papias. There is a striking resemblance between the two as we have them at present; but Papias's description, it is said, would lead us to think of them as very different. St. Matthew's Gospel, according to Papias, was a Hebrew book, containing an account only of our Lord's discourses; for so Schleiermacher translates τὰ λόγια, which we have rendered "oracles." St. Mark, on the other hand, wrote in Greek and recorded the acts as well as the words of Christ. Again, St. Mark's Gospel, which in its present state has an arrangement as orderly as St. Matthew's, was, according to Papias, not written in order. The conclusion which has been drawn is, that Papias's testimony relates not to our Gospels of SS. Matthew and Mark, but to their unknown originals; and accordingly many constantly speak of "the original Matthew," the "Ur-Marcus," though there is no particle of evidence beyond what may be extracted from this passage of Papias that there ever was any Gospel by SS. Matthew or Mark different from those we have. Renan even undertakes to give an account of the process by which the two very distinct works known to Papias, St. Matthew's collection of discourses, and St. Mark's collection of anecdotes, came into their present similar forms. In the early times, every possessor of anything that purported to be a record of our Lord desired to have the story complete; and would write into the margin of his book matter he met elsewhere, and so the book of St. Mark's anecdotes was enriched by a number of traits from St. Matthew's "discourses" and vice versa.

If this theory were true, we should expect to find in early times a multitude of gospels differing in their order and selection of facts. Why we should have now exactly four versions of the story is hard to explain on this hypothesis. We should expect that, by such mutual assimilation, all would in the end have been reduced to a single gospel. The solitary fact to which Renan appeals in support of his theory in reality refutes it—the fact, i.e., that the pericope of the adulteress (John vii. 53–viii. 11) is absent from some MSS. and differently placed in others. Such an instance is so unusual that critics have generally inferred that this pericope cannot be a genuine part of St. John's Gospel; but if Renan's theory were true, the phenomena present in a small degree in this case ought to