Loading...In my previous post I stressed that, contrary to what you sometimes may have heard or possibly will hear, Papias is not a direct witness to what the apostles of Jesus were saying. That is an important point because Papias gives a testimony that is often taken as hard proof that the second Gospel of the NT was written by Mark, the companion of Peter, and that the first Gospel was really and truly written by Matthew, the disciple of Jesus. If these claims were right, they would be highly significant. Matthew would have been written by someone who was there to see these things happen; and Mark’s account would be based on arguably the most important witness to Jesus’ life..
Here is what Papias says.
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Back in my fundamentalist days, I’d known there was a lot of interest in Papias. It made little sense to me at the time given his writings never survived, only some quotations. And later Church Fathers seemed dismissive of him (or so it seemed to me at the time).
It wasn’t until I left the movement that I put it together: Papias was a later version of Luke, who like the evangelist had conducted something of an investigation into Jesus’ life and teachings (see Lk 1:1-4). Fundamentalists need Papias to be an accurate investigator, because if he is, that lends credibility to Luke’s claimed investigative powers which in turn means his gospel is 100% totally completely and absolutely accurate. That is, the example of Papias shows investigations of this kind weren’t otherwise unheard of in the classical world. They could be done, and they were. Supposedly.
I’m not sure I understand your argument about Papias’ report on Jesus and the kingdom. I get why one would be dubious about the content of the claims (for example, that “on a single bough will be ten thousand branches” and so on) but I don’t understand at all why there is any reason to doubt that he is accurately reporting a teaching he heard from the elder or that the elder accurately reported the teaching to him. This just seems like a very natural way to make a point about how great the kingdom will be. It doesn’t sound at all like a literal prediction of what will actually happen but a hyperbolic illustration intended to paint a picture for the hearer/reader.
The context of Papias’ statements about Mark/Matthew is significant. According to Eusebius, Papias is “handing down traditions from the *Elder John*,” then introduces the material by saying, “This also the elder said.” Here the Elder isnt merely a companion but is Elder John himself.
Eusebius does acknowledge Papias transmitted unusual traditions, but doesnt attribute these to any particular disciple. Instead, he says they came through “unwritten tradition.” Notably, the “strange parables, teachings, and other more mythical things” Eusebius associates with Papias (especially that of an earthy/material millennial kingdom) closely resemble views Eusebius only a few paragraphs earlier attributed to Cerinthus. Papias’ famous saying about multiplicity of grapes/grain fits Eusebius’ critique of Cerinthus as envisioning a kingdom characterized by bodily pleasures/“delights of the belly.”
It’s worth noting Papias doesnt attribute this saying directly to John but to “the elders who saw John.” Meanwhile, Eusebius is careful to distance John from Cerinthus, as illustrated by the bathhouse-episode.
My suspicion isn’t that Papias is unreliable, but transmits traditions from a variety of sources, some trustworthy others speculative/eccentric (perhaps even connected to Cerinthus). Eusebius, in turn, seems intent on preserving what he considers valuable while distancing the apostolic witnesses from the problematic ones.
Papias’ version of Judas’ demise sounds like a “tale grew greatly in the telling” version of whatever was the source of Acts 1:16-19.
I wonder if the bulk of Papias’s work was a tediously boring and un-enlightening read with only the interesting snippets saved — although I can imagine a good scholar finding some useful information in the tedium. It’s tempting to consider an alternative scenario: his stuff was so controversial and strange that it might call the whole early Christian narrative tradition into question, so better to dustbin it.
Let us at least consider the implications of four gospels circulating anonymously before they are each eventually assigned an author by the time of Papias. Most scholars hold that “Matthew” and “Luke” relied on “Mark”. But for the theory of anonymity to work this must mean that two people relied on a gospel they knew not who wrote it. Yet they both considered it authoritative. This is very strange if they had no idea who wrote it. Had it already become “textbook” gospel? But why?
Again, how does a book even circulate anonymously? Are we to imagine a “Mark” laboring late at night, concealing his project from family and friends (Christians), then dropping his final draft at some door of some primitive house-church and stealing off into the night?
I wonder what would happen if we applied this degree of skepticism to other works. Does Plutarch announce himself as the author in the “Lives” attributed to him?
I don’t think Matthew and Luke did consider Mark particularly authoritative. It provided them with a number of their stories with wording that they often thought was satisfactory. But the fact that they changed it so extensively shows they didn’t think it was authoritative per se.
When we say that Mark was circulated anonymously, you’re right, we’re not saying that his original audience didn’t know who he was. But when it got copied and taken to other places, his identity was soon forgotten. That happened a *lot* in the ancient world. Including numerous classical authors, not just, famously, “Homer,” but all sorts of writings which were later attributed to someone who obviously did not write them. There is an entire field of scholarship devoted to this issue (scholars figuring out who wrote all those anonymous writings back there that eventually were attributed to Socrates or Plato, or Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Hippolytus, etc etc.
The statement about Mark may be at first or second hand. Jesus’s saying is at third or fourth hand with a line of witness. The story about Judas is introduced with “They say”. In modern English that phrase often indicates doubt about the reliability of one’s source. Is that the case with the Greek original?
A medieval chronicler might write that “They say that in India there exist men with the faces of dogs” and also, “When the king came to Winchester he called on X, Y, and the Prior of Z to attend him”. I don’t believe we would judge the writer’s veracity in one statement by the falsity of the other.
Yup, it’s equally ambiguous in the Greek: “They say…”
If Papias was writing about an out-of-sequence collection of Peter’s account (and called it “Mark”) and a book of Hebrew sayings (and called it “Matthew”) then how did those names get connected to the books that we now call by those names? Maybe Papias was not mistaken, and it was really Irenaeus or somebody else who made the mistake of connecting our extant books to those names?
Yes, that’s more likely what happened. Papias is not talking about our books, but to provide them with authority Irenaeus and others at the time took the names he mentioned and attached them to our (anonymous) books.
Could you give examples (or reference an analysis that is generally accepted as definitive and accurate) in Matthew which back up the statement that what Papias said (put together in Hebrew (for which I would read Hebrew and/or Aramaic – ie. Papias is saying put together in the original language, which he assumed was Hebrew) and interpreted them (which could have been in Greek) the best he could) is not true for Matthew?
I am interested in what people thought about Mark. Clement (1 Clement) uses Matthew and not Mark (except what’s in Matthew). If Mark originated in Peter’s Rome mission this seems difficult to understand – unless Mark was considered an inferior work perhaps.
Papias is clearly reporting word of mouth legends. He may be reporting them accurately, so if his legend about Matthew is wrong that does not mean the one about Mark needs to be equally wrong but it would lower the credibility of his sources.
Mark was a source for many of Matthew’s stories (and a number of his sayings); since they agree verbatim extensively, that shows he wsa copying Mark in Greek; he was not composing a book in Hebrew. That too is corroborated by the fact that Luke also used Mark with numerous verbatim agreements in Greek — in many of the same passages found as well in Matthew. The idea that Papias presents of Matthew composing in Hebrew almost certainly derives from his having heard that Matthew had produced an account of Jesus’s words and knowing that the actual, historical Matthew, was an Aramaic speaking Jew.
I don’t really have an issue with what Papias says here. Eusebius had his own agenda like they all did. I don’t get that the intention behind Papias’s accounts of Jesus and Judas was meant to be taken as historical truth. He’s not trying to supersede the Gospel accounts. With that in mind, he could be completely correct that Mark interpreted Jesus’s sayings from Peter.
I was thinking about Eusebius quoting the passage about Jesus from Josephus in the TF. I know he’s been accused of inserting or interpolating that particular passage, but what would have made him think he could get away with it? Other copies would have shown it wasn’t there. Wouldn’t someone ask where he got that particular passage from? If he inserted it himself, wouldn’t his handwriting give him away?
We don’t have the original manuscript so there’s no way to analyze he handwriting. When people say it wsa inserted into his writings they usually have someone in mind (e.g., that Eusebius did it).
“Is Papias Generally Trustworthy?”
Undergrad International Relations professor: there are 3views to every event- my observation, your observation & my interpretation of your observation
BingAi: Papias is exactly that problem:
The apostle’s experience
The elder’s retelling
Papias’s interpretation
Eusebius’s interpretation of Papias
Our interpretation of Eusebius
Papias is a case study in how ancient information gets layered, refracted, and reinterpreted.
If you want, I can walk through specific Papias claims (e.g., about Mark, Matthew, Judas, millennialism) and show how each one fits into these layers of interpretation.