Papias of Hierapolis.

        The oldest Christian writer to give exegesis of this kind was one named Papias, who lived at Hierapolis in Phrygia early in the second century. Papias lost no opportunity to meet and talk with any older Christian who came his way who might have known anyone who had heard the apostles. For from such living witnesses to Jesus' words and doings Papias felt he could learn more than from Christian books. And out of such interviews with his elders, about A.D. 120, or a little later, Papias produced a work of his own, in five books, which he called the Interpretations of Sayings of the Lord.

        This work has disappeared, but Irenaeus and Eusebius knew it and made use of it, and what they and later writers quoted from it shows that it contained traditions of the utmost value about the beginnings of Christian history and literature. A long list of Christian writers use or mention Papias other than Irenaeus (A.D. 181-89) and Eusebius (326)-Jerome (d. 420), Philip of Side (ca. 430) Andreas of Caesarea (late sixth century), Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), Anastasius of Sinai (d. ca. 700), Georgius Hamartolus (ca. 842), and Photius (890). There are also scattered references to him in anonymous pieces.

        It is from Papias that we learn the early Christian tradition about the origin of the Gospel of Mark:

Mark having become the interpreter of Peter wrote down accurately everything that he remembered, without however recording in order what was either said or done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord speak nor did he follow him, but afterwards, as I said, attended Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs of his hearers, but had no design of giving a connected account of the Lord's oracles. So then Mark made no mistake while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one care not to omit anything that he heard, or to set down any false statement therein.

This statement, obscure as it is, has proved of great value in dealing with the vexed question of the origin of Mark. Much more perplexing is Papias' statement about Matthew: “So then Matthew composed the Sayings (logic) in the Aramaic language, and each one translated them as best he could.” The only possible meaning of this is that Matthew the apostle was believed to be the author of the oral gospel.

        Eusebius calls Papias a man of very limited understanding, but this is perhaps due to Papias' crass millennialism, which rather attracted Irenaeus but so repelled Eusebius:

The days will come in which vines shall grow each having ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch again ten thousand twigs, and on each twig ten thousand clusters, and on each cluster ten thousand grapes, and each grape when pressed shall yield twenty-five measures of wine. And when any of the saints shall have taken hold of one of their clusters, another will cry, “I am a better cluster; take me, bless the Lord through me!”

Such millennial calculations-more modestly paralleled in 2 Bar. 29:5-outrun current population figures, but under them lay the dream of a time when nature would respond freely and richly to man's needs.

        Papias did not agree that Judas hanged himself and died, as Matthew reported (Matt. 27:5), but held that, like the traitorous Nadan, in the Story of Ahikar, he swelled to a hideous size. This tradition of his fate is reflected in Acts 1:18. He speaks of Aristion and the Elder John as disciples of the Lord who were among his informants (so Eusebius and Jerome say). He quoted the daughters of Philip, mentioned in Acts (21: 9), as saying that Barsabbas, who was called Justus-the man mentioned in Acts 1: 23 as nominated to take Judas' place-”when challenged by unbelievers drank serpent's poison in the name of the Lord and was shielded from all harm.” He says that some persons raised from the dead by Christ lived on until the time of Hadrian, who became emperor in the summer of A.D. 117. He also says that John and James were killed by the Jews. These statements are preserved in Philip of Side, who wrote about A.D. 430; the last one is also reported by Georgius Hamartolus, about A.D. 842.

        Papias is quoted by Andreas of Caesarea as the earliest witness to the Book of Revelation, and as time went on he was pushed further and further back toward John the Evangelist, becoming in the Middle Ages not only his disciple but the scribe to whom John dictated his gospel. Most of these writers indicate in which of the five books what they report from Papias is found, so that it is fairly clear that his work was still in existence at the end of the ninth century. Of all the early Christian books now lost, Papias' Exegeses is one we should most like to recover. Some of his interpretations may underlie those given by Irenaeus, but recovering them is a task unlikely to lead to complete satisfaction.