Papias of Hierapolis

Papias of Hierapolis was an early Christian bishop and ecclesiastical writer of the late first and early second centuries, counted among the Apostolic Fathers. He held the episcopal see of Hierapolis in Phrygia, in the Roman province of Asia, a city in the Lycus valley of western Asia Minor near Laodicea and Colossae. Almost nothing is known of his origins or personal circumstances. The principal ancient witnesses to his life and work are Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the later second century, and Eusebius of Caesarea, writing in the early fourth. Irenaeus described Papias as a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp of Smyrna, a man of primitive times. Eusebius, who had access to Papias’s writings, recorded that he was bishop of Hierapolis and quoted extensively from him, while also criticizing his millenarian opinions and his intellectual capacity.

Papias composed a work in five books entitled Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, which is now lost except for fragments and paraphrases preserved by Irenaeus, Eusebius, and a few later authors. In a well-known preface quoted by Eusebius, Papias stated that he did not take pleasure in those who said many things, but in those who taught the truth, and that he did not consider what came from books to be as profitable as what came from a living and abiding voice. He therefore made inquiry of those who had followed the elders, asking what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and also what Aristion and the elder John, the disciples of the Lord, were saying. Irenaeus took this to mean that Papias had himself heard the apostle John. Eusebius argued that Papias distinguished two men named John—the apostle and another figure called the elder John—and that Papias had known only the latter. The interpretation of this passage remains disputed among historians.

The fragments of Papias are among the earliest extra-canonical testimonies to the origins of the Gospels. He reported that Mark, having been Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, as many of the things said or done by the Lord as he remembered, for Mark had neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but later followed Peter, who used to give teaching as need arose. Papias also stated that Matthew compiled the sayings in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he was able. These notices have been fundamental to subsequent discussion of Marcan and Matthean origins. Other surviving traditions attributed to Papias include an account of the death of Judas Iscariot that differs from those in the New Testament, a report that Justus Barsabbas drank deadly poison without harm, stories of the raising of the dead in Papias’s own time, and material associated with the daughters of Philip, who according to early tradition resided at Hierapolis.

Papias was a chiliast: he taught a future earthly millennial kingdom of Christ, claiming to have received this doctrine from oral apostolic tradition. Irenaeus quoted him in support of a literal thousand-year reign after the resurrection of the just, including vivid descriptions of extraordinary fertility in that age. Eusebius, who rejected millenarianism, treated these views as evidence that Papias was a man of very little intelligence who had misunderstood the apostles’ mystical sayings. Because of this later discomfort with chiliasm, Papias’s work was not widely copied and eventually disappeared. The chronology of his life cannot be established with certainty. He is generally assigned to the first half of the second century; estimates of when he wrote range from the closing years of the first century to the middle of the second. Later notices that he died a martyr, sometimes placed in the reign of Marcus Aurelius, rest on weak and late evidence and are not regarded as historically secure. In the Roman Martyrology he is commemorated on 22 February as bishop of Hierapolis.