PALM.— The word occurs (Mk 1465. j^ jgL^^ cf. 19*) in the tr. of pdwLa/xa, a blow with the open hand. It refers to the stroke on the cheek (Mt 5*^, Lk 6-^), one of the affronts and indignities that may have to be borne cheerfully in representing and serving the Kingdom of heaven. In ]SIt 26*', Mk 14*5, a distinction is implied between the rough jest of hitting with the hst (KoXacpifw) by the soldiers standing in front of Christ and the smiting with the palm by the servants of the high priests as tliej' stood behind and challenged Him to tell from whom the blow had come. For all Christ prayed that the sin committed in ignorance might be forgiven (Lk 23*''). It is only by a Christian that affront can really be put upon Christ (Ph 3'^).
G. M. Mackie.
PALSY.— See Paralysis.
PAPIAS. — 1. Papias as witness to Gospels. —
There is no early evidence as to our Gospels com- parable to that of Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, even in the fragmentary and obscure form in which it has reached us through the pages of Eusebius {HE iii. 39). Eu.sebius' own slighting estimate of Papias' judgment Avas due largely to distaste for the highly realistic form in Avhich he set forth the common primitive expectation of an imminent reign of Christ on a renewed earth, whicli Papias held, with the Apocalypse of John (2(>"'^-). would last a thousand years. But, whatever his mental calibre, Papias' importance lies rather in his endeavour to keep in touch with historical witness, as far as possible first-hand witness, to the true or original meaning of the Lord's own teaching.
For realizing such an aim Papias had exceptional
advantages. There is little doubt that after the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in A.D. 70, if not before, tlie Roman province of Asia was the chief centre of Christian tradition out.-ide Palestine. The foundation for this had been laid by St. Paul, with Ephesus as ba.'^e of influence ; and hither were attracted not a few of the leading personal disciples of Jesus, including, perhaps, several of the original Apostles. Chief of all, we must reckon John, the son of Zebedee, whose presence at Ephesus for a period of years cannot be explained away by any confusion with another John. The latters title, • the Elder' it.self implies the need for distinguish- ing him from a greater namesake residing in the same neighbourhood.
The statement in certain late writers that John, as well as his brother James, had been ' done to death by Jews,' even if correct, would not negative this. But it is very possibly a mistake, since Eusebius, who was on the look out for all facts bearing on the lives of Apostles, says nothing of the kind. It probablv arose from the misunderstanding of a passage in which Papias explained the ' cup ' of Christ in Mk lO'^f , Mt 202if. as ' martyrdom ' — which in James' case was unto death, but in John's stopped short of that.
Hierapolis, Papias' home in South Phrygia, wa.s well within the province of Asia and near the main road to Ejjhesus from the East, while it actually lay on another road nmning N.W. through Asia to SmjTna and Pergamum. A man so situated, and with a passion for first-hand information as to Christ's teaching, had special chances of intercourse with such disciples of the first generation ('elders' he calls them) <as visited or worked in A>-ia, so far as his youth or early manhood overlapped their later years. But how far was this the case ? For an answer to this question we have to rely on the chapter of Eusebius already referred to, and par- ticularlj- on certain of Papias" own words there cited.
2. Papias' book and the situation it presup- poses. ^Papias wrote a work in five books, entitled ' Exposition of the Lords Oracles (Logia).' Quot- ing from this, Iren.ieus wrote, about A.D. 180 : ' These things Papias, too, who was a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp. a man of the old time (apxalos dvTjp], further witnesses in writing.' This statement Eusebius, anxious to dissociate John from Papias' millenarian ^-iews, challenges, saying that he does not claim to have heard Apostles,' but onl}- a.ssociates of theirs. In support of this, he quotes a passage from Papias' preface which enables us to judge how far his own reading of it is -svar- ranted. ' In studj-ing it, our chief care must be to read it in the light of what we can learn as to the scope of its author's preface as a whole.
(a) The LorcFs 'Oracles' and their recoj-d. — V^e gather that Papias felt constrained to write by the needs of the times in the western part of Asia ]\Iinor, where much diversity of ^-iew existed as to the standard of Christian faith and practice, owing largely to uncertainty both as to the exact wording of ChrLst's sayings and as to their real meaning. Some, it is true, took no pains even to ground their practice in all things on Christ's own words as spoken to His personal disciples, but deferred to 'alien precepts' coming through doubt- ful media of Divine revelation, rather than direct from this supreme source of truth. But, to Pajdas, the only sure way of reaching the mind of Christ, the Truth itself, is to start from the Apostolic written collection of ' the Oracles,' as he conceived the Go.spel according to Matthew to be, the one directly Apostolic document of this character (the Johannine Gospel is in any case of another type). To this method some — probably typical Greek or ' Gnostic ' Christians, to whom its markedly Jewish and eschatological colour may have been an offence — might object that the accuracy of this Gospel itself was not above question, pointing to the ditier-