Papias

Papias was bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, in western Asia Minor, during the early decades of the second century. Almost nothing is known of his origins, family, or personal life, and no contemporary source records a birthplace or a date of birth. The principal ancient witnesses to him are Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the later second century, and Eusebius of Caesarea in the early fourth century. Irenaeus, in Against Heresies, described Papias as a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp, a man of the primitive age of the Church. Eusebius devoted a chapter of his Ecclesiastical History to Papias and preserved the most substantial surviving quotations from Papias’s own writings. Later notices that attempt to fix precise years for his life or death are not supported by the earliest evidence.

Papias composed a work in five books entitled Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. The work itself is lost; only fragments survive, chiefly in Eusebius and in later authors such as Irenaeus, Apollinaris of Laodicea, and Andrew of Caesarea. In a preface quoted by Eusebius, Papias explained that he preferred the living oral tradition of those who had known the apostles to information found in books. He listed among his informants disciples of the Lord—Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, and Matthew—and also Aristion and “the elder John,” whom he distinguished from the apostle. From these sources he collected sayings, anecdotes, and interpretations. His method makes him one of the earliest named collectors of extra-canonical apostolic tradition in Asia Minor.

The fragments of Papias are of particular importance for the early history of the Gospels. He reported that Mark, as the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately though not in order what he remembered of the Lord’s words and deeds, and that Matthew compiled the oracles in the Hebrew language, which others then translated as they were able. Other fragments attribute to Papias traditions about the death of Judas Iscariot, millennial expectations of a future earthly kingdom, and stories involving the daughters of Philip the evangelist, who according to Acts settled at Hierapolis. Eusebius, who disliked chiliastic speculation, judged Papias to have been a man of very small intelligence and suggested that his millenarian views had misled later writers such as Irenaeus. That polemical judgment has colored much later discussion of Papias, but it does not cancel the historical value of the Gospel traditions he transmitted.

Papias is venerated as a saint in both East and West. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on 22 February as bishop of Hierapolis, a hearer of the apostle John and companion of Polycarp. The circumstances of his death are not recorded in the earliest sources; later notices that he suffered martyrdom lack contemporary confirmation. Because his major work has perished, modern knowledge of Papias remains fragmentary, yet the surviving excerpts continue to be studied as among the earliest extra-canonical witnesses to the origins of the New Testament Gospels and to the transmission of apostolic tradition in second-century Asia Minor.