The Armenian version makes a natural inference when it forms the second group by reading ' Aristo and John the Elders.' But the change is clearly arbitrary. Papias applies the title 'the Elder' only to ' John ' to distinguish him from the Apostle. It was doubtless applicable to Aristion as well (Conybeare, Expositor, 1893, p. 248, against Hilgen- feld, Ztschr. f. luUsenschaft. Thcol. xxxvii. 1894, p. 626), but was superfluous. The exegesis suggested above (Weiffenbach, Corssen, et al.) removes all difficulty by rendering roiis tCjv irp. aviKptvov \6yov! as an ellipsis : ' I would inquire the utterances of
. . .„/ - ^" >" Peter . . .
had said,' because ' Elder ' is then used consistently throughout the paragraph for traditor of the post- Apostolic generation (cf. Ac. 15-- ■*■ " 21"* ancl the Heb. ipi), thouijh it is not relied on (as in Arm.) to make tlie distinction of the Apostolic from the liost-Apostolic generation, but only of the two homonymous individuals, John the Apostle and John the Elder.
On this interpretation, Aristion and John were members of the group which perpetuated the tradi- tions of the Apostles (in Palestine ?) until Papias' day (cf. Hegesippus ap. Eus. HE III. xxxii. 6-8, and Lk 1'-^ Ac IP" 15-- <• "• ==• ^s oi'S). But even if this exegesis be rejected, there is no escape from the following alternative : Either the descriptive phrase oi ToO Kvplav ixaBriTal, appended after 'Aristion and the Elder John' precisely as after the list of Ajiostles, is textually conupt (assimilated to the preceding clause) ; or the designation is used in a ditlereiit and very loose significance. On this view the only certainty is that Aristion was living at the time of Papias' inquiries (A.D. 120-140?) after 'Apostolic narratives' (diroaToXi/cas 5i7)7^(rfis), and in a region whence Papias could obtain them only from ' travellers who came his way . ' For Eusebius' statement that ' Papias was himself a hearer, not of the Apostles, but of Aristion and the Elder John,' is made in the interest of his desire to find 'some other John in Asia' besides the Apostle (Zahn, Forsch. vi. 117 f.), and is corrected by him- self in the next clause : ' At all events he mentions them frequently by name, and sets down their traditions in his ■vn'itings.'
(3) A second difficulty of more importance for the true reading of Papias and the identification of ' Aristion ' than is generally recognized, is the spelling of the name, which Syr. and Arm. give as 'Aristo.' For this spelling, in combination with the omission of the designation ' the disciples of the Lord,' is not only traceable to about A.D. 400 (Syr. is extant in a MS of A.D. 462), but these two main variations are accompanied by minor ones in Syriac, Armenian, and Latin authorities, which form a grou]) in that they manifest a belief in com- mon regarding the personality of Aristo-Aristion which ditt'ers from that of the received text of Eusebius.
2. Text of Eusebius. —Siommi^m (ZNTW iii. 1902, p. 156 iT.)regarded this textual evidenceascon- cliLsive in conjunction with the admitted ' chrono- logical difficulty.' He would therefore omit the epitlieton/;-OH( the tc.U of Eusebius. Corssen {ib. iii. p. 242 ti'. ) rightly criticised Mommsen's proposal to omit, because some designation of this second link in the chain of traditores is indispensable to the sense. He thought Papias capable of the colossal anachronism of regarding his own contemporaries as 'disciples of the Lord.' The present writer had argued (Journ. of Bibl. Lit. xvii., 1898) for the reading ol Toin-wv /xaOrirai {sc. tQv dTroo-TiXui/) as the true text of Papias, on the internal evidence, and because 'the Elders' of Papias are twice referred to by Irenreus {Hmr. V. v. 1 and V. xxxvi. 1) as 'the disciples of the Apostles.' The corruption followed by Eusebius (and probably even by Irenseus in this passage, though he transcribed others where ' the Elders ' were correctly described as 'disciples of the Apostles'), involves only the change (by assimilation) of three letters, OITOT- (TnX)MAeHTAI becoming OITO'r(KT)MAeHTAr. In the form Avherein Edwin Abbott (Enc. Bibl. s.v. 'Go.spels,' ii. col. 1815, n. 3) adopts the emenda- tion, the change involves l)ut tw-ojetters, OITOT- (Tr2)MAeHTAI becoming OITOT(KT)MAeHTAI, as in Jg 4=* (LXX) Tf!X TIfiX B becomes KT TlfiN in A. This would largely explain the strange error
116
ARISTION (ARISTO)
AKISTION (ARISTO)
of Iieiiieus ill taking Papias to belony to a genera- tion even earlier than Polycarp (' some of them saw- not only John but other Apostles also, and heard these same things from them and testify [present] these things'). The difficulty experienced by ■Eusebius in refuting it could hardly have been so great if his text of Papias had not the same corruption.
On this view the variants are of no help to imjirove the text of Eusebius, -which is correct in the received form (Bacon, art. ' False Witness,' etc., in ZNTW vi. 1905). They have some im- portance, even if arbitrary, as indicating that in antiquity also the 'chronological difficulty' was felt as well as (in Arm.) the incompleteness of sense produced by simple omission of the descrip- tive clause and (in KuHnus) the incongruity of applying to 'Aristion and John the Elder' the same designation by which the Apostles had just been distinguished. They would have great im- portance if it could be made probable that they rest, diiectly or indirectly, upon a knowledge of Papias (or, nmch less probably, of Aristion-Aristo) independently of Eusebiu.s.