Papias is not merely a Church Father, he’s also counted as an Apostolic Father, having known one or more of the apostles (mainly, and according to him, John). He appears to have been a native of Phrygia (a province in western Anatolia populated by ethnic Greeks) and was a bishop there. He’s presumed to have been born around 60 CE and lived at least two or three decades into the 2nd. Papias also was an associate (perhaps a little older, but maybe not) of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna.
His main claim to fame as a Church Father is a long document he wrote —something of a gospel — called Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, which is no longer extant and is known to us only in the form of quotations from later Church Fathers. Some of the things he had to say about early Christianity are of questionable merit, and even in classical times he had his detractors.
Like Luke the Evangelist (as seen in Luke 1:1-4), Papias portrayed himself as something of an inquiring chronicler, recording all the recollections of Jesus and the apostles that he heard, confirming them with others where possible, all with an eye toward discerning the truth. He had access to people traveling through his region who’d known Jesus or his apostles or his apostles’ colleagues. It’s easy for modern Christians to equate this with the work of an investigative reporter, but that discipline certainly didn’t exist in the Greco-Roman world, so it can be taken too seriously.
Also, this kind of talk implies controversies afoot that Papias was trying to address. Whether he was genuinely attempting to resolve these controversies, or simply wanted to grant his writings on these matters a veneer of reliability, is unknown.
His Exposition is said to have been comprised of five books covering different segments of Jesus’ life and career. His own title for it in the original Greek was Λογιων Κυριακων Εξηγησις (Logiōn Kuriakōn Exēgēsis). In modern translation, logion means “sayings,” but in its original κοινη (koinē or “common”) Greek, and in the context of Greco-Roman culture, it meant “oracles.” The implication was that these were the words (and/or actions) of a divine being.
One might think — due to this title — that Papias’s gospel was an example of a “sayings gospel” along the lines of the “lost gospel” Q or the Gospel of Thomas. But based on what’s said of it, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Papias himself uses logia to describe works by Matthew and Mark and might be references to those two gospels. One assumes, then, that his own logia must have been similar to those.
The problem is that almost no one else ever used logia to speak of the gospels (or other works of a similar genre). There are limits to the presumption that Papias had been speaking of the gospels that we have. Still, he offered some comments … and they’ve carried weight, since, within Christian legend. So they’re worth addressing.
Papias agrees with the Christian legend that the gospel according to Matthew had originally been written by the apostle Matthew in Hebrew and only later translated into Greek, with the original Hebrew text being lost (or, perhaps, enduring in some other form, such as the Gospel of the Hebrews). Papias also tells us that Matthew wrote those sayings and events down in strict chronological order.
It’s almost certainly not the case that the Matthew gospel we have had originally been written in Hebrew (or Aramaic, assuming Papias confused the two languages, which is possible — both would have been alien to him, but both were used by Jews even if in different contexts). That gospel shows none of the linguistic footprints one might see in such translations. Furthermore, it contains a few sort phrases in Aramaic (e.g. Jesus’ famous cry of “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani” in Mt 27:46). Had it originally been a work written in Aramaic, why would its Greek translator have left those particular portions untranslated?
Papias also stated overtly that Mark’s gospel relates events in Jesus’ life out of order, because the man he’d learned them from — i.e. the apostle Peter — couldn’t be bothered relating them in order. This is a curious comment; it makes little sense, considering Mark is believed to have been Peter’s companion for a number of years. It’s one thing for Mark to have written down the stories about Jesus that Peter told, in whatever order he may have told them (perhaps to separate audiences and while discussing different topics). It’s another to claim Mark penned them in the wrong order because Peter had related them in the wrong order (again, one assumes to separate audiences). Two men working together over a period of years ought to have been able to work out such things privately.
But if Papias is to be believed, that never happened. It also flies in the face of the fact that the narrative order of events in both Matthew and Mark are similar. They’re similar enough that Mark is viewed by most scholars (since the middle of the 19th century) as a possible or likely source for Matthew.
Something that a number of modern scholars have concluded is that the works of Matthew and Mark that Papias was referring to, were not the gospels by those names that we have today. They were, instead, other works.
According to surviving writings by an obscure figure, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Papias had also offered a preposterous tale about the demise of the fabled traitor Judas of Iscariot. According to Papias, Judas hadn’t died when he hung himself. Judas, it seems, had survived somehow, but became bloated beyond recognition; so enormous that he couldn’t get through a street that a wagon could fit through easily. He died at some later time, in enormous agony with his (vast) body literally blowing itself out, releasing a stench that could still be smelled … even centuries after Papias had penned this tale in Apollinaris’s time, (i.e. the late 4th century).
Although one might call this an elaboration of the (very short) story of Judas’s death as related in Acts 1:18, it goes far beyond that, and moreover, is referenced nowhere else in surviving Christian writings or legend.
A number of later Church Fathers had something to say about Papias of Hieropolis … but almost none of it was good. It’s almost certain they were aware of the absurd nature of some of Papias’s reports and didn’t take him seriously.
Among those is early Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea, who considered Papias something of an idiot (in 21st century English vernacular). Eusebius quoted him, though, and so did a number of other Church Fathers. Papias’s work was still available to Eusebius even in the middle of the 4th century. But given all that they say about Papias, it’s clear many of them (like Eusebius) didn’t take him seriously.
It’s not that Papias had been a heretic; there’s no evidence anyone had ever said anything of the kind about him. And within his own time (i.e. the late 1st century to early 2nd) “heresy” was not really on Christianity’s radar.
No, it appears that Papias just wasn’t considered reliable. While Christians might have kept his work alive for a few centuries after his time, their importance waned, and in the end Papias was relegated to the dustbin of Christian history. This is why we don’t have his massive tome to work from, just a few small bits that other Christians happened to have quoted. His own Logia wasn’t valued enough to be perpetuated.
In the 20th century the rise of fundamentalist Christianity led to a kind of historical rehabilitation of Papias of Hieropolis. The trigger for this appears to be his claim to have interrogated any Christian who came through his region and had anything to relate about Jesus, his apostles, his apostles’ followers, etc. That Papias took the time to write all these things down — and in fact had things to write down at all — somehow (as fundamentalists see it) — “proves” the literal veracity of the gospels and other works now found in the Bible.
In short, they’ve made Papias into a something of a modern-day investigative reporter, just as they’ve done with Luke the Evangelist. As noted previously, though, this is an anachronistic interpretation. There was no such thing as an investigative reporter at that time. Fact-checking was difficult to do, and confirming people’s accounts of events was often all but impossible.
Let’s face it: Neither Luke nor Papias were the ancient equivalents of Woodward & Bernstein, or Jack Anderson or Mike Wallace or Nelly Bly or anyone of that kind. But many fundamentalists will not accept that reality.
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