RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Papias
Iact, on the Apocalypse, i. 18 sqq.; and Eng. transl., ANF, i. 155. This seems neither an attempt to merge the two canonical accounts (Zahn), nor proof that Papias knew not the Gospel of Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles; but it shows that he had a third, a more widely dispersed, oral tradition whose untrustworthiness he failed to suspect. Evidently to some other Papias the fragment of the four Marys is to be ascribed; cf. Grabe, Spicilegium sanctorum patrum ut et hcereticorum seculi, II., i. 34 (Oxford, 1800), and Eng. transl., ANF, i. 155. To be mentioned is the notice in the preface of the Fourth Gospel in a Vulgate manuscript of the Vatican which declares Papias to be the writer of the Fourth Gospel, and is supported by the Catena patrum Grcecarum in Sanctum Johannem (ed. B. Corderius, Antwerp, 1630) which declares that John dictated to Papias. This tradition is unsupported. The verdict of Eusebius on Papias is obscure. The characterization " of limited understanding " (III., xxxix. 13; Eng. transl., NPNF, 2 ser., i. 172) seems to have only localized reference to Papias on account of his chiliastic 7. Charac- views. The passage " a man most terization. learned in all things and well versed in the Scriptures " (III., xxxvi. 2; Eng. transl., ANPF, 2 ser., i. 166, note) is declared to be an interpolation. That in the succeeding centuries Papias was highly regarded appears in the foregoing discussion; nevertheless, in the absence of his works, he can not be properly estimated. (K. LEIMBACHf.)
It has long been known that the surprisingly early date which Irenseus assigns (see § 2) to Papias, his written authority for " words of the elders," was based on a confusion. Eusebius, 8. Mis- though he had himself in his Chronicon dating of (220) adopted the view and even the Papias by language of Irenseus, became con- Irenaeus. vinced of the error; after careful examination of the entire work of Papias, a small volume of only five " books " ( = the modern " chapter ") admitted by Irenseus to be " the only work written by him," he cited in his "History" (III., xxxix.; see above, § 1) the passage which he considered to have given rise to it. Eusebius' critical insight had been sharpened meantime by study of the controversy of Dionysius of Alexandria (q.v.) with the Chiliasts. In this Dionysius had so far borrowed the weapons of Caius, bishop of Rome (q.v.), in the latter's " Dialogue with Proclus " as to reject Revelation as a non-apostolic writing, attributing it to " some other John." Eusebius shows a strong disposition to agree on this point with Dionysius, though of course not with Dionysius' predecessor Gaius in rejecting all the " Johannine " writings. As completing Dionysius' argument against Revelation the discovery that Irenseus, in using Papias, had confused John the Apostle with " another John " was welcome to Eusebius. He gives accordingly a painstaking demonstration of Irenseus' mistake from the work of Papias itself, contrary to the entire ecclesiastical interest and prepossession of his time. Against this it is useless in the absence of the work of Papias to revert to the state-
ments of so inaccurate and prejudiced a writer as Irenseus, when among those who possessed it for centuries, and would gladly have answered Eusebius if they could, not one whisper was raised in his defense. The most that can be said for Irenseus is that his copy of Papias may already have contained the clause " the disciples of the Lord " repeated after the names of " Aristion and John the Elder." Eusebius' copy already did so, and most of our own copies still do. If so, it was not altogether unnatural for a careless reader of the passage to disregard the distinction between things which had been said by the apostles, and the things which were being said by " Aristion and John the Elder." The clause, however, as applied to these obscure persons involves at least " a chronological difficulty," as even Lightfoot conceded (Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion, p. 150, London, 1889); hence a number of ancient texts either cancel or alter it. The two letters to which would give " (disciples) of these " (i.e., the apostles just named) have probably been assimilated to kv (" of the Lord ") in the similar clause of the preceding line. In fact Eusebius, who alone has taken the witness' deposition on this point, and who declares that Papias was largely dependent on Aristion and the Elder John, tells us that he " confesses that he had received the words of the apostles from those who had followed them" (Hist, eccl., III., xxxix. 7); and again, "Papias himself by no means declares that he himself was a hearer and eye-witness of the holy apostles, but shows by the language which he uses that he received the matters of the faith from those who were the disciples of these " (III., xxxix. 2). Modern efforts to reinflate the Irensean characterization of Papias as " a hearer of John (the Apostle) and an associate of Polycarp, a man of the earliest times " after the Eusebian puncture are therefore hopeless. Irenseus is probably misled by the same passage when, in recording the tradition regarding Jesus' age (§ 6), he boasts that " some of them (the Asian elders) saw not only John but others also of the apostles and testify (a written witness is implied by the present tense) to the aforesaid." The date of Papias' birth must consequently be placed in more reasonable relation to that of his death traditionally fixed in 165 a.d.
The new fragments of Papias published by De
Boor (TU, v. 2, 1889) confirm Eusebius' charge of
antedating. One fragment seems to
9. Testi- have been the heading of a chapter, mony of the " Concerning those raised from the
De Boor dead by Christ, how that they lived Fragments, until the times of Hadrian." Not only would it be unnatural for one himself living under Hadrian (117-138 a.d.) to speak thus, but the statement itself appears to be an exaggeration of that made by Quadratus (q.v.) in the Apology delivered by him in person to that emperor. The statement as Quadratus made it would be perfectly credible, viz., that " some of " those healed and raised from the dead by Jesus " survived even to our day " (Euseb., Hist., IV., iii. 2). As Papias makes it, it shows the distortion of a later hand, writing not earlier than under Antoninus. Har-
Papias Papyrus