Is the Gospel of Mark in Papias Our Gospel of Mark?
Can we trust a source such as Papias on the question of whether our Gospel of Matthew was written by the disciple Matthew and that our Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter? It is interesting that Papias tells a story that is recorded in our Matthew but tells it so completely differently that it appears he doesn’t know Matthew’s version. And so when he says Matthew wrote Matthew, is he referring to *our* Matthew, or to some other book? (Recall, the Gospel he refers to is a collection of Jesus’ sayings in Hebrew; the Gospel of Matthew that *we* have is a narrative, not a collection of sayings, and was written in Greek.) If he *is* referring to our Matthew, why doesn’t he see it as an authoritative account? Here's the conflicting story. It involves the death of Judas. And it’s quite a story! Here is my translation of it from my edition, The Apostolic Fathers (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1; 2004). But Judas went about in this [...]