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PAPIAS
PAPIAS
ences between it and the Petrine Gospel by Mark. To meet some such difficulty,* which was perhaps meant to lower the authority of both Gospels (since Mark also had Jewish features of the kind in ques- tion), Papias cites a tradition derived from a man of the first Christian generation, 'the Elder' (? John, see below), as he styles him —
' And this the Elder used to say : Mark, indeed (/ctiv), having been Peter's interpreter, wrote down with accuracy, yet not in order, everything he bore in mind — the things, namel.y, either said or done by the Christ (or Lord). For neither did he listen to the Lord nor did he follow Him, but later on, as I said, Peter, who adapted his instructions to the requirements, yet without intending to make a connected account of the Lord's sayings (tr-jvToi^iv TcHv xupiotx.uiv cToio6fjt,ivos Koyuv or Xayicov"). Accordingly Mark was in no way in fault in so writing certain things as he recalled them : for of one thing he took precaution, not to omit anything that he had heard or therein to state anything falsely.'
Here we have a defence of the trustworthiness of Mark's narrative, so far as it goes, save on the score of the arrangement of its material, which, having originally been delivered by Peter in an order determined by the exigencies of Christian in- struction (5i5acr/caXiat, as distinct from public preach- ing, K-npvy/jLa), was reproduced by Mark with simple fidelity. A Gospel so composed made no claim to comparison, as regards the order of the Lord's sayings (so far as it recorded them), with a Go.spel written by one of Peter's fellow-disciples on a different principle, that of collecting the weighty utterances of the Lord (rd Xoyia), disposed in orderly grouping. Such, liowever, was the Go.spel com- posed by the Apostle Matthew, as we may infer that Papias went on to quote ' the Elder ' as saying in effect.
Probably the sentence beginning ' But Matthew,' which the ' Mark, indeed (^sv), ..." of the extract in Eusebius seems to imply, included a statement that Matthew wrote 'among the Hebrews,' i.e. in Palestine. At least this is an element common to Irenseus (in. i. 1), and the tradition preserved in Euseb. lii. 24, possibly from Clement of Alexandria, whose account of the Gospels as contained in ' a tradition of the elders of earlier times' (™» avixxdiv -rpio-iiuTipm) he elsewhere cites (vi. 14). Now in ii. 15 Clement is cited by Euseb. for an expanded form of the Papian tradition as to Mark's Gospel, with the additional remark that Clement's account is confirmed by Papias of Hierapolis. Papias, in fact, was the nucleus of that tradition ; and so his Matthaean tradition, as given already in iii. 24, is here omitted.
Thus the whole passage was a defence at once of Mark's Gospel and of Matthew's, with which Papias from the nature of the case is mainly con- cerned. Then in the extract which Eusebius im- mediately subjoins, Papias sums up {o?)v) the net result of his discussion touching the accuracy of ' the Oracles ' as originally compiled by that Apostle.
' Matthew, then, for his part, in Hebrew com- piled the Oracles ; but their interpretation was determined by each man's ability. ' In this render- ing, which keeps as closely as possible to the order of the original, t emphasis no doubt falls on the fact that MattheAv's authoritative collection of the Lord's Oracles was in Hebrew, or rather Aramaic, and not in Greek. Yet Papias does not seem to have said anything about the manner in which the Greek Matthew, as current in the region where he was writing, came into being, else Eusebius would have gone on to cite information so much to his purpose. Hence we may infer that the point of the citation lies in the Avords actually given, and that Papias is explaining why various versions of the Oracles (in whole or pai-t) were then current side by side with the recognized Greek Matthew. They went back, that is, to the time when Matthew's collection of the Oracles existed only in
* other views as to the exact reason for the comparison of the Gospels of Matthew and Mark are possible ; but the above seems best to fit in with the passage in Papias' preface touching bis aim and method dealt with below.
t Matrflaioj fx.h ouv'E(Spa.'ihi hiakixru ra. Xiyix in/v£Ta|«TO (prefer- able to (ruviypx-^KTO, cf. /ruvra^iv above), ■hpfjLntiviri h' a.\nu. i>; r,v cuvxTo; ixaa-To;. The Logia, then, is Papias' description of the main contents of Matthew's Gospel in terms of his special in- terest in it, not the actual title of any writing ever current under that name.
a non-Greek form, various imperfect renderings of which passed into currency before the final Greek version was made. In this way he is able to set aside rival forms of certain sayings to those on which, as standing in the Greek Matthew, he bases his own exposition of the Lord's teaching.
While it is likely that Papias based on the Elder's testimony his own assertion that Matthew himself wrote his collection of the Lord's Oracles, it seems precarious to lean much weight on the statement. Against this there are various objections. Thus the Preface to Luke's Gospel seems to exclude any such Apostolic record, and its disappearance would be hard to explain.