what papias said about john

7/27/2019 What Papias Said About John

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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN(AND LUKE)A 'NEW PAPIAN FRAGMENTI N T R O D U C T I O N

W H A T Papias said about Matthew and Mark (at least part of it)is well known and these snippets of information preserved byEusebius , HE 2.15; 3.39.15-16, have suffered no lack of attentionin Gospels study. But in nei ther of the two places where heexplici t ly mentions Papias ' t radit ions about Matthew or Markdoes Eusebius leave us with anything of what Papias might havesaid about Luke or John. The s i lence about John has been consid-ered especially eloquent, for according to Irenaeus (and this wascertainly believed by Eusebius) , the Four th Gospel had beenwritten in Asia Minor by the apostle, who would have died almostcertainly within Papias ' own lifetime. Some have concluded fromthis that Papias did not know the Fourth Gospel .1 B ut it is widelyadmitted today that hedid, because there are traces of its use inone or more of the fragments at tr ibuted to Papias by others ,2 inone of the eschatological traditions mentioned by Irenaeus whichhe attributes to the Asian elders,3 the source for which was almostcertainly Papias, and because Eusebius tells us explicitly thatPapias used 1 John .4 This then throws the at tention upon Eusebiushimself. If Papias said something about John, why did Eusebiusnot record it?

1 E.g. , B. Lindars , The Gospel of John, N CB C (Grand Ra pids /London, 1972) ,p. 30; U. H. J. Kortner , Papias von Hierapolis (Gottingen, 1983), p. 197. Cf.G. Zuntz, 'Papiana' , ZntW 82 (1991), 243-63, at 261, 'Papias hat das VierteEvangelium, soviel wir wissen, nicht erwahnt; man darf zweifeln, ob eres gekannthat . ' P. Vielhauer, Geschichte der urchristliche Literature (Berlin/New York, 1975),p. 457, thinks Papias knew but passed over the Fourth Gospel because he viewedit as heretical due to its use bygnost ics .2 See in part icular the Armenian fragments publ ished by F. Siegert,'Unbeachtete Papiaszi tate bei armenischen Schnfts tel lern ' , NTS 27 (1981),605-14, now printed in J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. H a r m e r , The Apostolic Fathers,rev. and ed. J. W. Holmes (Grand Rapids, 19922), Papian fragment n. 25, whichrefers to a com me nt Papias mad e on the aloe of John. 19:39. See Siegert, 608609.Also cf. the testimonies of Ligh t foo t /Harmer , nn 19, 20, 23, which contain,


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE ) 583One answer that has suggested itself to many is that Eusebiusdid not record it because he was embarrassed by it , because therewas something in it he did not like and therefore decided tosuppress .5 That Eusebius should f ind something in Papias ' worknot to his liking is not at all improbable, given his estimate ofPapias ' chiliasm, and his intelligence {HE 3.39.12-13). In thispaper, however, it will be argued that Eusebius was not entirelysilent about Papias ' witness to the origins of the Fourth Gospel,but that we in fact possess a paraphrase of that witness, preservingmuch of the vocabulary of the original. But before examining this'new' Papian fragment, we may first remind ourselves of what wemight expect to find in such a witness.

I . L E A D S F R O M A U T H O R S D E P E N D E N T U P O N P A P I A SIrenaeus tells us explicitly that he had read Papias' book, andthere are reasons to believe that others in the second and thirdcenturies had as well. From their comments on the origins ofMatthew and Mark, several other authors are thought to havebeen dependent upon Papias ' t radit ions , among them Clement ofAlexandria, the author of the Muratorian Fragment, Origen andvery probably Victorinus of Pettau.6 It is not unreasonable tosuppose then, that if Papias did say something about the genesisof John's Gospel, we might possess some semblance of his reportin the words of those who had read him. If so, then RichardBa uck ham will have a good case for his conc lusion tha t the re po rtmust have included some notice of John being 'urged on' byothers to write his Gospel, and must have involved some questionof the order of events recorded as compared to the Synoptics.7

The further contention made by both Bauckham and Martin5 E.g., R. J. Bauckham, 'Papias and Polycrates on the Origin of the FourthGospel', JTS NS 44 (1993), 24-69, at 45-53; Hengel, Frage, p. 88.6 For Victorinus, see J. Chapman, 'Papias on the Age of our Lord', JTS 9(1908), 4261; J. Haussleiter, Victorim episcopi Petavionensis opera, CS EL 49(Vienna/Leipzig, 1916), p. 154; F. Heard, 'Papias' Quotations from the NewTestament', NTS 1 (1954-55) 13034, who all argue that Victorinus used Papias'work. M. Dulaey, Victorin de Poetovio premier exegete latin, 2 vols. Collection desEtudes Augustiniennes, SA 139 (Paris, 1993), I, pp. 272-78, is uncertain on thequestion. Bauckham, Origin, 64, acknowledges Victorinus' dependence uponPapias in his account of Mark's Gospel, but argues that this might have beenindirect, mediated by Irenaeus, or that Victorinus might not have been dependent


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584 CHARLES E. HILLHengel that Papias had in fact attributed the Four th Gospel tothe myster ious John the Elder , remains to be proved, however,fo r it is not mentioned in any of the later sources. Here it will beuseful to cite the tes t imonies in question.Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord , whoalso had leaned upon hisbreast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus inAsia. (Irenaeus, AH 3.1.1)John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith, and seeks, by theproclamation of the Gospel , to remove that error which by Cerinthus hadbeen disseminated among men, and a long time previously by those termedNicolaitans.. . Thedisciple of the Lord therefore desiring to put an end toall such doctrines, and to establish the rule of t ruth in the Church ... thuscomm enced his teaching in theGo spel . . . ( I renaeus, AH 3.11.1)But that John, last of all, conscious that the outward facts had beenset forth in the Gospels , was urged on (TTpoTpanrevTa) by his disciple(yvwpifjLwv), and, divinely moved by the Spirit , composed a spiri tualGospel . (Clement , Hypotyposeis in Eus. , HE 6.14.7)The fourth [book] of the Gospels is that of John [one] of the disciples.When hisfellow-disciples andbishops urged (cohortantibus) [him], he said:'Fast together with me today for three days and, what shall be revealed toeach, let us tell [it] to each other ' . On the same night it was revealed toAndrew, [one] of the Apostles, that, with all of them reviewing [i t] , Johnshould describe all things in his own name. And so, although differentbeginnings (varia ... principia) might be taught in theseparate books of theGospels, nevertheless it makes no difference to the faith of believers, sinceall things in all [of them] are declared by the one sovereign Spiritcon-cerning his nativity, concerning [His] passion, concerning [His] resurrec-tion, concerning [His] walk with Hisdisciples, andconcerning Hisdoubleadvent: the first in humil i ty when He was despised, which has been; thesecond in royal power, glorious, which is tobe. What marvel, then, if Johnso constantly brings forward particular [matters] (singuld) also in hisEpistles, saying of himself: 'Wha t we have seen with our eyes and haveheard with [our] ears and our hands have handled, these things we havewritten toyou. ' For thus hedeclares that he was not only aneyewitness andhearer, butalso awriter of all the wonderful things (mirabilium) of the Lordin order (per ordinem)? (Muratorian Fragment)

8 I am using the translation and the restored Latin text in D. J. Theron , Evidenceof Tradition (Grand Rapids, 1957). For the view that the MF is a fourth-centurywork, see A. Sundberg, 'Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List ' , HTR 66 (1973),141; G. M. Hahneman , The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon,OTM (Oxford, 1992). For criticism of this view and a reaffirmation of a late second-or early third-century date, see, E. Ferguson, 'Canon M uratori: Date and Prov enance ' ,


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (ANDLUKE) 585There is a report noted down in writing that John collected the written

Gospels in his own lifetime in the reign of Nero, and approved of andrecognized those of which thedeceit of thedevil had not taken possession;but refused and rejected those which he perceived were not truthful.(Origen, Horn. Lk. I, fr. g)9

For when Valentinus [sic!], Cerinthus and Ebion and the others of theschool of Satan were spread over theworld, all thebishops came togetherto him (convenerunt ad ilium) from the most distant provinces andcompelled him to write a testimony. (Victorinus, inApoc. i I . I ) 1 0

The suggestion that John wrote at the urging of others(whether they were pupils, disciples of Jesus, apostles or bishops)is found in Clement of Alexandria, the MF, and Victorinus. Itis, however, not mentioned by Irenaeus, who gives his ownscanty information about that Gospel's origins very probably, inmy opinion, from tradition received from Polycarp. Victorinusseems to have combined the account of Irenaeus and of one ofthese other authors (either Papias, Clement, or the fragmentist,or perhaps someone else). That the urging on of John by othersmight have come from Papias is perhaps made more likelybecause this same idea shows up in the tradition about Markwhich Eusebius got from Clement and which he says wassupported by Papias: Peter's hearers, it is said, requested fromMark a written account of Peter's reminiscences (HE 2.15.1; cf.

9 New Testament Apocrypha, trans. W. Schneemelcher, rev. edn., 2 vols.(Cambridge/Louisville, ET, 1991), vol. 1, p. 46. Greek text from M. Rauer,Ongenes Werke, vol. 9, GCS49 (Berlin, 19592): Aoyos ear! TrapaypairTeos 'IwdwrjvTt irepiovra f$C


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586 CHARLES E. HIL L6.14.6).11 The underlying idea seems to be, as K. Stendahl hasobserved, that the Apostles did not take it upon themselves towrite but were acceding to the requests of others.1 2

The question of the proper order of events recorded in theGospels, which is raised in Papias ' account of the origin of Mark,is also visible in the MF's words about John. The MF speaks of'different beginnings'1 3 of the Gospels, and later declares thatJohn's Gospel gives 'all the wonderful things of the Lord inorder ' , which could well imply that someone else did not givethem quite in order. The different beginnings are no seriousproblem to believers, he avers, as all four Gospels have the sover-eign Spirit as their author and agree about the cardinal points inthe gospel story.Another l ink between the MF and the excerpt from Papias 'elder on Mark in HE 3.39.15 should be recognized. The elderremarks that Mark should not be criticized for 'writing downsingle points (Ivia) as he remembered them', for he 'had not heardthe Lord, nor had he followed him', but only set out to give acomplete and faithful account of what he remembered of Peter 'steaching. The author of the M F says it is not to be wondered atthat John 'so constantly brings forward particular matters (sing-ula)' in his Gospel and Epistles, for he was an eyewitness andhearer and a writer of all the marvellous things of the Lord inorder. There is here not only a striking coincidence in vocabulary

" It is possible that the mention of the urging on of M ark by Pete r's l istenersgoes back only to Clement and not to Papias. Clement himself is quoted to thiseffect by Eusebius in 6.14.6. When Eusebius mentions the story in 2.15.1-2 heonly says that Papias supports (aufem^tapTupei) Clement and cites Papias' mentionof Mark by Peter in his letter written from Rome (1 Pet. 5:13). However, we knowfrom the quotation of Papias' elder in 3.39.15 that Papias reported (a ) Mark ' sauthorship of the Gospel , (b ) that the Gospel was Mark's version of Peter'spreaching. Both of these elements i t has in common with the report summarizedin 2.15.1-2. Further, Papias' elder refers to a previous comment of his which isnot in the excerpt of 3.39.25, in which he had said that Mark followed Peter. Thereport of 2.15.1 contains this information, as also does Clement 's quotation in6.14.6. There is so much in common then between the report of Papias in 3.39.15and that of Clement in 6.14.6 as to make it probable that Papias too had madesome comment about Mark's writing coming as the result of a request fromPeter ' s hearers .

12K. Stendahl, 'The Apocalypse of John and the Epistles of Paul in theM ura torian Fra gm en t ' , in VV K lassen and G. F. Snyder, (eds.), Current Issues inNew Testamen t Interpretation. Essays in honor of Otto A. Piper (New York, 1962)


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WHAT PAP1AS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUK E) 587(evia; singula), bu t also in the justification given for each a uth or :Mark writing from memory cannot be faulted for writing particu-lar points as he remembered them, for he had not heard the Lord(but was following Peter 's ad hoc preaching); John natural ly bringsforth particular points ' in order ' , for he did see and hear the Lord.This can hardly be set down to mere coincidence and tends toconfirm that the author of the MF is de pe nd en t, wh ethe r first orsecond hand, upon the tradit ion recorded by Papias .

The concern about the proper 'order' of narrative material is not,however, present in Clement's account, at least in what Eusebiuspreserves of it. Nor is it present in Irenaeus in AH 3.1.1, where herelates summarily the origins of all four Gospels in a manner whichmust signify his knowledge of Papias. But it may well be presentelsewhere in his work. Irenaeus shows that he is well aware of the'different beginnings' of the four Gospels in AH 3.11.8, and hetur ns them to apologetic advantage, each beginning m anifesting thepeculiar character of each Gospel to be like the four faces of thecherubim on which the Lord is seated according to Ezek. 1:5-10and Rev. 4:6 -8 . But a closer link to Papias, thro ug h th e Asian eld ers,is visible in comments Irenaeus makes elsewhere which also pertainto the question of the 'order' of events in the Gospels. TheValentinians had taken what they regarded as the thirty years ofJes us' life to 'show forth the thirty silent Aeons of their syste m ' (A H2.22.1). This was based on their contention that after Jesus wasbaptized (being about thirty years old, according to Luke 3:23), heministered for no more than one year before being crucified.14 ButIrenaeus castigates them for not even taking note of the severalPassovers mentioned in the Gospels (2.22.3). He says 'Gospels', butof course cites only the one Gospel which can provide this informa-tion, namely, John's. Irenaeus counts in this Gospel four Passovers,including the last one which coincided with Jesus' crucifixion.15Therefore, Jesus did not die in his thirtieth year, and theValentinians are refuted. He can cite the Gospel of John and thecontroversy that arose in Jesus' encounter with his critics, in whichthey denounced his claim to having known Abraham by referringto his youn g age, 'not yet fifty years old'. Th is , says Irena eu s, w ouldnot be said of a thirty-year-old, but requires that Jesus 'did not

14 This conclusion, amazingly, would also be stated by Clement of Alexandria,


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588 CHARLES E. HIL Lthen want much of being fifty years old' (John 8:57).I6 In supportof this Irenaeus claims to have independent witness to the age ofJesus from 'the elders who were conversant with John', who 'testifythat John had handed down these things ' (Lat. adds ' to them').This is usually taken to mean that these elders (perhaps John theElder and Aristion) had some tradition they attributed to Johnwhich said that Jesus lived past forty17 (no exact age is ever specifiedby Iren aeus). Th is is certainly possible. But Irena eus ' words w ouldalso be compatible with the less difficult supposition that thesewitnesses had merely affirmed that Jesus' ministry actually beganwell before the 'one year' which can be read out of the Synoptics(thus allowing for a grea ter age for Jesus), tha t is, in sup po rt of th e'order ' of John's Gospel. Thus viewed, we can see that Irenaeus isclaiming from the 'elders', almost certainly as recorded somewhereby Papias, some kind of support for John's 'order ' , based on therecognition that John records a longer public ministry than isportrayed in the other three Gospels. This then provides a possiblehint about the nature of Papias ' comments about John's Gospel .

I I . P A P I A S O N J O H N1 . The Fragment

This brings us to our proposal that Eusebius actually did pre-serve the essence of what Papias said about the Fourth Gospel. Itis contained, I think, in HE 3.24.5-13, where he gives us technic-al ly anonymous tradit ion concerning both Matthew and John.5. Yet nevertheless of all the disciples of the Lord, only Matthew andJohn have left us their recollections (vTToixvrjjxaTa). A record preserv(xaTe'xei Ao'yoy) that they took to writing out of necessity (kndvayK es).6. Matthew having first preached to Hebrews, and when he was on thepoint of going to others, supplied to those from whom he was sentthrough his writing the lack of his presence by handing down the Gospelaccording to himself, written in his native tongue. 7. And after Mark and

16 There is some evidence that Irenaeus later modified his view on the extentof Jesus' age. In the Demonstration 74 he indicates that the crucifixion took placeun de r C lau diu s Caesa r (4154), which w ould allow for Jesus bein g well into hisforties, consistent with Irenaeus' position in AH 2.22. Dem. 99 refers to the AHas already written, but only three books may have been written by that t ime(O . Bardenhewer , Geschichte der altkirchlichen Literatur (Darmstadt, 1962 repr. of1913 orig.) i, 409). But in AH 4.22.2 Irenaeus seems to say that Jesus taught only


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W H A T P A P I A S S A I D A B O U T J O H N (AND L U K E ) 589Luke had already made the publication of the Gospels according to t h e m ,John , it is said {aoi), used all the t ime a proclamation (iam) that on account of these things,the apostle John was exhorted (irapaKX-qdevTa) to hand down (irapaSovvai)in the Gospel according to himself the t ime passed over in silence by thefirst evangelists and the things which had been done by the Saviour atthis time (that is, things before the impr isonment of the Baptist) , andthat he signified this when saying 'this beginning of marvels did Jesus '[John 2:11], and then by calling to mind (ixv-qixovevaavra) the Baptis t inthe midst of the acts of Jesus as still then baptizing at Aenon near Salem,plainly indicating this when he says 'for John was not yet cast into prison'[John 3:24]. 12. T h u s J o h n in the Scripture (or writ ing) of the Gospelaccording to him hands down (wapaSi'Sajaiv) the things done (npaxdevTa)by Christ when the Baptist had not yet been cast into prison, but theother three evangelists record (fj.vT]ixovevouaiv) the things after the Baptisthad been shut up in prison. 13. If this be unders tood, no longer do theGospels seem to disagree with one another, because that according toJohn contains the first things of the acts of Christ , but the rest thenarrative of what happened to him at the end of the period. And fittinglyJohn passed over the genealogy of our Saviour according to the flesh,because it had been already written out by Matthew and Luke , and beganwith the description of his divinity since this had been reserved for himby the Divine Spirit as for one greater than they.1 9

Though this account inEusebius iswell known, it is not usuallyrecognized that Eusebius ishere paraphrasing a written account.20Lawlor has made a study of Eusebius' use of K arix^ Aoyos, whichEusebius uses at the beginning of this account, andconcludes thatit normally signifies a written source.18


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5 9 0 C H A R L E S E. H I L LIn themajority of cases where Eusebius introduces a narrative with thewords Xoyos (/


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 591quotes , the elder has not previously said that Mark was not apersonal follower of the Lord but only of Peter .2 4 We also knowthat what Eusebius records of Papias ' comments on Mark in3.39.15 is not all Papias said about Mark, for hegives additionalinformation from Papias in 2.15.1-2. Obviously, whatever pur-pose Eusebius had in 3.39.15-16, it was not to give a completeaccounting of all that Papias said about the origins of the Gospels .Law lor 's concrete suggestion that Eu sebiu s ' report about M atthewin 3.24.6 from a 'written record' comes in fact from Papias, fromthe same place he actually cites in 3.39.16, is then quite credible.Lawlor draws back, however, from what would seem the naturalconclusion that the material which follows in 3.24 about John isalso based on this writte n record.2 5 (T he only scholar I have foundwho has previously taken such a position is Vernon Bartlet, who,unfortunately, employed relatively few arguments tosuppor t it.)26Lawlor fails tonote that Eusebius at tr ibutes to this written recordboth hisMat thean and Johannine tradit ions: 'A record preservesthat they [Matthew and John] took towriting out of necessity' .27And indeed the stories which follow bear out this claim, that bothMat thew and John took to writ ing through some pressing need.Both accounts also stress the respective apostles' work of preaching(Krjpv^as of Mat thew; KrjpvyfiaTi and Krjpvyfxaros of John) beforethey wrote. What is more, af ter introducing the accounts of both

2 4 J. B. Lightfoot, Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion(London/New York, 1893), p. 207.

2 5 Lawlor points to the use of aol, 'they say' (used in 3.24.7, 11), as evidencethat this part of the tradition is oral. But this is hardly valid. See e.g., 2.15.1 wheretjiaai is used when the written sources, Clement of Alexandria and Papias, areactually named in the context, and cf. Lawlor's own note 2 on p. 36, whichidentifies at least 1.12.1, 3, (cf. 13.11); 2.2.2 as using aoi when there is a writtenwork as the source, and 7.12 where Eusebius uses it as equivalent to Karexei Xoyos.Lawlor may be right in saying that '^oai is a favourite word of Eusebius forunwritten report' (36), but it is not so used exclusively. Sellew at any rate seemsunjustified in contrasting it too sharply with Kare'xei Aoyos, regarding it as signifying'oral legends' or written sources of questionable reputation (Eusebius and theGospels, pp. 117-18, p. 121). From 2.2.4 't becomes clear that the source for aoiin 2.2.2 is Tertullian's Apology 5.

2 6 V. Bartlet, 'Papias's "Exposition": Its Date and Contents', in H. G. Wood,(ed.), Amicitiae Corolla. A Volume of Essays Presented to James Rendel Harris, D.Litt. on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday (London, 1933), pp. 1544. Bartletperceptively, in my opinion, recognizes that Eusebius is reporting from Papias in


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592 CHARLES E. HIL LGospels with Karexei Adyoy, Eusebius follows the first excerptabout John with the words, Kai aXrjdijs ye 6 Xoyos ('and the recordis surely true'), the Xoyos here naturally referring to the precedingone. Eusebius is definitely presenting this account of the originsof Matthew and John as from a single written source which wealready have some reason to suspect was Papias.As to the contents of the fragment, it relates that after all threeformer Gospels had been published, John sti l l used his unwrit tenproclamation; that he approved of these three Gospels; that henoted their omission of events from the earlier part of Jesus 'ministry; that he was exhorted {jrapaK XiqdevTa, 3 .24 .n ) by some tosupply that lack by handing down inwriting what was previouslyunwri t ten . This it gives as the motivation for his writ ing.2 8D o wehave then in 3.24.5, 7-8, 11-13 theessence of Papias 'tradit ion on the origin of the Fourth Gospel? A study of thecontents and a comparison with Papias' accounts of the otherGospels and with theaccounts of the Gospels by those who hadread Papias will confirm, I believe, that we do. We may nowexamine the contents of this fragment more closely.2. Parallels with Papias' Accounts of the Other Gospels.

Words and ideas common to this fragment and the other Papianfragments on the Gospels are noticeable. The fragment used hereby Eusebius relates how both Matthew and John came to writetheir Gospels 'out of necessity ' and that John was exhorted(TTapa.K \r)6evTa, 3.24.11) by his hearers to hand down in writ ingwhat was previously unwritten and omitted from the first threeGospels . This , aswe have seen, parallels what Clement, who hadread Papias, says about Mark in a place where Eusebius saysClemen t is supported by the account of Papias:2 9 Peter ' s hearersexhorted (napaK Xrjaeaiv, 2.15.1; cf. 6.14.6) Mark to leave them amemoi r of what Peter taught . This seems to point to a thematicunity regarding at least the Gospels of Matthew, Mark , and John .T h e r e is an interest in showing that each writer did not take itupon himself to initiate the process but (besides being empoweredby theSpirit, 3.24.3, 13) was impelled by an external call fromhis hearers aswell. Each writer then had good cause; Matthew toleave behind to the Jewish Christians inPalestine a writ ten record


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 593satisfy the godly yearnings of the Christians in Rome for a perman-ent record of Peter 's preaching, and John , to comply with therequest to supplement the former Gospels with what they lackedparticularly from the first years of Jesus ' ministry . If the samesource said very much about Luke (from 3.24.7 we surmise thatit said something), it will be reasonable tosuppose that some suchexplanation would have attended the information delivered aboutthat Gospel.3 0

The presentat ion of the written Gospels of Matthew and Johnin our fragment and of Mark in 3.39.15 as the setting down inwriting of what was previously preached or taught by an apostleis also a point common to both accounts (3.24.6, 7; 39.15).In 2.15.1 Eusebius also relates the story of the origin of theGospel of Mark, and calls Mark a recollection {v-no^vqjxaf^ ofPeter's teaching, saying that his sources for the story were Clementof Alexandria andPapias. Possibly this reflected thewording ofClement , for in6.14.6, where Eusebius cites Clement 's testimonyexplicitly, the participle fA.efxvqfA.evov is used of Mark, as one whoremembered what Peter had spoken, though the noun imofivrjfxais not used. But here in 3.24.5 the noun is used, as Eusebiusintroduces the witness of his written source by saying that 'onlyMatthew and John have left us their recollections' (uTro/xi'T/^.aTa).32Eusebius draws some conclusions, either his own based on the

3 0 See the Appendix, 'What Papias Said about Luke'.31 This word can have a fairly wide range of meanings. Lampe, PGL, lists:

' 1 . memorial, reminder; 2. record; a. minutes; b. account; c. copy; d. petition;3. commentary; 4. division, section, "book" of treatise'. See also A. van den Hoek,'Techniques of Quotation in Clement of Alexandria. A View of Ancient LiteraryWorking Methods', VC 50 (1996), 22343, at 225, who records the meaning 'note'or 'notebook', as well as a more literary 'memoranda'. Hegesippus gave this nameto his book, on which see N. Hyldahl, 'Hegesipps Hypomnemata', StudiaTheologica 14 (i960), 70-113.

3 2 This is of course reminiscent of the term Justin will use repeatedly for theGospels, a-nojj.vrifj.ovvifj.aTa. See B. W. Bacon, 'Marcion, Papias, and "The Elders" ',JTS NS 23 (1922), 13460 at 154, 'Justin's use of Papias is made probable by hisadoption of the very expression of Papias in speaking of the Gospel of Mark asthe a.T!ofxvj)fiovvejiaTa of Peter. He reproduces in the same chapter we have justquoted (Dial, lxxxi) the very passage from Isaiah (Ixv 17 f) which Papias elaboratedaccording to the explicit testimony of Irenaeus (Haer. V xxxiii 3, 4) and which inthe Epideixts (lxi) he tells us was thus applied by "the Elders"'. R. G. Heard,'The ATrofivT)fj.ovvfj.aTa n Papias, Justin and Irenaeus', NTS 1 (1954-55) 122-29,also argues that Justin got the term from Papias, though Hyldahl, HegesippsHypomnemata, 79, is doubtful of this. See also L. Abramowski, 'Die


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594 CHARLES E HILLsource, or as repeating theconclusions drawn already in his source,in 3.24.8-10, support ing the t ru th of the report by advert ing toMat t . 4:12; Mark 1:14, and Luke 3:19-20, which demons tra tethat each of the Synoptics begins its major account of Jesus 'ministry from the time after the Bapt is t ' s impr isonment . ButEusebius then returns to his source in 3.24.11 and includes asevidently from it the references to John 2:11 and3:24. T h a t is,' they say' both that John was asked to relate what the formerevangelists had left out from the beginnings of Jesus ' minis try,and that John signified this when he said ' this beginning of marvelsdid Jesus ' , and when he said, 'for John was not yet cast intoprison ' . This lat ter element in fact forms a parallel to whatEusebius elsewhere tells us that Papias related about Peter. In2.15.2 Eusebius cites Papias as saying ' that Peter mentions Markin his first Epistle, and tha t he composed this in R o m e itself,which they say that he himself indicates,33 referring to the citymetaphorically asBabylon, in thewords , "theelect one in Babylongreets you, and Marcus my son" [1 Pet 3:1s] ' .3 4 In other words ,Papias 'ratified' or at least gave implicit legitimacy to the Gospelof Mark from another authori tat ive document, 1 Peter , wherePeter himself mentions Mark.

3 5In l ike manner, weobserve thatPapias will have supported his story of how John came to writehis Gospel with 'ratification' from the Gospel itself, confirmingthat it waswrit ten to record many of the Lord 's deeds whichoccurred before John 's impr isonment .3 6 It is also exceedinglyprobable that , as Lightfoot and Bauckham have suggested, thetestimonies from 1 John which Eusebius says Papias used (3.39.17)were also appended in Papias ' account in suppor t of the Four thGospel , in th is same manner , as 1 Peter 3:15 was used to suppor t

Mark 's Gospel .3 7 That th is is precisely what theMF does mustsuppor t the probabil i ty that it was done earlier by Papias .Cf.CTTy/xatVeifTeTOUT' CLVTOV in 2.1 5.2 with auro re TOUT' kiriaT]n.TJvaadaiin 3.24.11.

3 4 This does appear to be the continuation of his mention of Papias, and not areference back to information he has gleaned from Clement (pace Sellew, Eusebiusand the Gospels, p. 117): KXrffitjs ev


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 595This interest in emphasizing the supplemental nature of John'sGospe l38 fits with the concern for the 'order ' of the events in Mark 'sGospel evident in the report of Papias' elder in 3.39.15. Mark wroteaccurately 'all that he remembered , not, indeed, in order, of thethings said or done by the Lord ' ; in this he was simply followingPeter's style, who taught according to need, 'not making, as it were,an arrangement of the Lord's oracles ' . John, on theother hand, itis implied in our fragment, gave things in order, even naming thefirst of the Lord's signs (John 2:11) (3.24.11).Three t imes in the short space of 3.39.15 (Papias' account ofMark) , there occurs a distinctive feature of the elder's style in theperip hras tic use of -rrotelv in the m iddle voice with an accom panyingnoun .3 9 The same feature turns uphere in3.24.7 where Eusebiusis paraphrasing his source: 'But Mark and Luke having alreadymade the publication (rqv eKSocriv -rrTToi.r)p.eva>vw) of the Gospelsaccording to them ..."The e lder quoted by Papias in 3.39.15 also has a distinctive wayof speaking about the contents of the Gospe ls . A great deal ofattention has been given tohis mention of the Lord's Adyia, whichhe says Mark and Matthew conta ined . This has sometimes

obscured the fact that this presbyter also speaks of the Gospel ofMark as recording 'the things said or done by the L o r d ' (rd vndTOV K vptov r) Ae^^eVTa 7} npaxdevTa), using here the aorist passiveparticiple.41 The source used by Eusebius in 3.24 uses the samenota t ion. Thepassive participle, aorist or perfect , of npaaaoj forthe deeds of Jesus in the Gospels occurs no less than four timesin Eusebius ' paraphrase and summary of this source {-npaxdivrain 3.24.12; 77E7TpayfxeVa or tTtirpayixivoiv in 3.24.7, 8, n ) . 4 2 Related3 8 The view of John's Gospel as supplementary to the other three became a

commonplace among later patristic theologians. See M. Wiles, The SpiritualGospel. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church (Cambridge,i960), pp. 11, 13-21

7rotLTO TOLS bioaoKaAias', ovvra^iv ... 7roiovfAvos', iTronjoaTO npovotav. T h i s f e a t u r eo c c u r s t w e n t y - o n e t i m e s in the NewT e s t a m e n t , m o s t l y in L u k e and P a u l , ando n l y o n c e in the J o h a n n i n e l i t e r a t u r e ( J o h n 1 4 :2 3 ) .

4 0 T h i s p h r a s e at l eas t is not t yp i ca l of E u s e b i u s ' own s p e e c h . The word exSdoi s ,e d i t i o n or p u b l i c a t i o n , o c c u r s f o u r t i m e s in the Historia ecclesiastica and s i x t y - t w ot i m e s in all of E u s e b i u s ' w o r k s . In noo t h e r i n s t a n c e is it f o u n d as theo b j e c t of muffr.

4 1 T h i s fa c t iso f t e n i g n o r e d by t h o s e w h o w i s h to se e in t h i s f r a g m e n t a r e f e r e n c em e r e l y to a ' s a y i n g s c o l l e c t i o n ' w i t h o u t p l o t or n a r r a t i v e .

4 2 Also, in describing the work of the other evangelists Eusebius reports in3.24.10 what Luke recorded 'before beginning the Acts of Jesus' ( TO V VTJOOO


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596 CHA RLES E. HIL Lto this is a rather peculiar way of referring to the contents of theGospels as 'the acts of Jesus' or 'the acts of Christ ' (3.24.10 TWVTOV 'Irjaov npdewv', 1 1 , ribv 'ITJOOV rrpd^ewv', 1 3 , TWV TOV XpiOTOvnpd^eoiv). In all the writings of Eusebius, 'acts of Jesus' turns uponly two more times; 'acts of Christ ' never, 'acts and teachings ofthe Saviour' once. In Dem. evang. 3.5.67, we read, 'And note whata remarkable thing it is that they all agreed in every point in theiraccount of the acts of Jesus'. And later in Dem. evang. 3.5.89where he is alluding to tradition, 'Mark, being his friend andcompanion, is said to have recorded the accounts of Peter aboutthe acts of Jesus'. As we know, the earliest authority for thistradition about Mark is Papias' elder, whom Eusebius quoted inHE 3.39.15. But it is only in HE 3.24.10, 11 that E use bius speaksof the 'acts of Jesus'. We suspect that the words of the elder hadalready been brought to Eusebius' mind here in Dem. evang.3.5.89, for in the previous chapter (3.4.49) Eusebius had used adistinctive phrase in reference to the Gospels which we can withcertitude ascribe to the elder, T


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 597perhaps suggest ing some am biguity in the original account.44 T h eMF's more elaborate version, containing details unparalleled inany other writer who knew Papias, probably represents significantexpansions on Papias' simpler account.(b) Order in the G ospels. Bauckham's deduction that Papias musthave said something about John's 'order ' isalso confirmed by thisfragment, at least partially. All accounts (Papias and those earlywriters whoknew his work) profess themselves to be aware ofdifferences between John's and the other three Gospels , and thequest ion of 'order ' is present here in3.24 as it is in Papias' accountof Mark (3.39.15) and in the MF. The latter states that John 'wasnot only an eyewitness and hearer, but also a writer of all thewonderful things of the Lord in order (per ordinem)'.

This last statement from the MF will confirm in an impressiveway that its author was familiar with the t radi t ion about John 'sGospel which lies behind Eusebius' account in HE 3.24.513.Eusebius' source claimed that the difference in order, justifyingthe Fourth Gospel , is indicated byJohn himself in John 2:11 and3:24. But the citation of John 2:11 in HE 3.24.11 is unconven-tional. Eusebius' source says, ' this beginning ofmarvels did Jesus' .The word for marvels is TOJI' TrapaSo^ojv, instead of TCOV o-qiAticov,which occurs in all the Greek manuscr ipts of John 's Gospel .Eusebius cites John 2:11 in twoother places in his writ ings, ineach of which 45 he preserves the o-qpeCwv of the original.46 Itappears that the reading TWV napaSo^cov then was the wording inEusebius ' source. In the New Tes tamen t the word TrapdSogos isused only in Luke 5:26, where it describes the strange or marvel-lous things the crowds saw at the hands of Jesus. The Vulgatetranslates TrapdSogos in Luke 5:26 with mirabilium. This peculiarvariation in our f ragment must be related to thes ta tement in theMF about John, 'For thus he declares that he was not only aneyewitness and hearer, but also awriter of all the wonderful things{mirabilium) of the Lord in order (per ordinem)'. This s tr ik ingcoincidence can only reinforce the conclusion that the author ofthe MF, w ho we have already seen was dependent upon Papias'

4 4 Clement's word, yvuipijioi., is also used by Eusebius when introducing thework of Papias. After stating that Papias had not seen the Apostles, he says 'hehad received the articles of the faith from those known to them ( T eKciVoi?yvcopifj.uii'Y (HE 3 . 3 9 . 2 ) .

4 5


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598 CHARLES E. HILLstatements on Mark,4 7 must have also known the account on Johnwhich Eusebius uses in 3.24 .1 i :It migh t be thou gh t that the concern for the right order expressedby Papias' elder in 3.39.15 is not exactly the same as the concernm et by the tradition that John wrote to supplement the otherGo spels, as recorded by Eus ebius from his source in 3.24. T h e lattercould be read as a statement that the previous Gospels only omittedcertain things (particularly the events at the beginning of Jesus 'ministry) and not that they were somehow deficient in 'o rder ' . Butthe passing reference to 'order ' in the elder 's words about Mark in3.39.15 is not altogether perspicuous. Scholars have disagreedwh ether it has to do with chronological or with literary arran gem ent,or with something else. Here it seems that the MF provides a key.The author , aswe have just seen, distinguishes John as aneye andear witness who wrote 'all the wonderful things of the L ord in o rde r'{per ordinem) (cf. John 2:11), as Bauckham says, 'per ordinem, surelycorresponding to rd^t in Papias'.48 T h e MF then is clearly workingwith Papias' concern for the 'order' relative to the different Gospels.His solution to the perceived problem is hinted at in his referenceto John being 'a writer of all the wonderful things of the Lord inorder ' , which must be related to John's apparent 'ordering' of atleast two of Jesu s' early miracles'this beginning ofhis signs Jesusdid at Cana in Galilee' (2:11); 'This was now the second sign thatJesus did w hen he had come from Jude a to Galilee' (4:54). T h at thisthen relates to the non-synoptic, extra material given in John 'saccount, and particularly to 'first' things recorded in the Gospels isconfirmed by a statement he had made earlier in his account of theorigin of Jo hn 's G ospel when he says, 'although different beginnin gs{varia ... principia) might be taught in the separate books of theGospels, nevertheless it makes no difference to the faith ofbelievers ...'. This concern is seen also in his account of Luke (theonly other substantial gospel account remaining in the fragment),where the author of the MF also makes a point about where Luke'began (incepit) his story', that is, 'from the birth of John ' . Thoughwe do not have this author 's words about Mark, it should also beremembered that the Gospel of Mark itself begins, 'The beginningof the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God' (Mark 1:1) and thenlaunches abruptly into an account of the ministry of John theBaptist,49 omitting all reference to Jesus' birth and early life. All of


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 599this leads to the conclusion that the concern about 'order ' in theGospels relative to each other has much to do with the differentways theGospels commence and thematerial their authors chose toinclude at the beginnings of their respective accounts. At least it wasby focusing attention on these beginnings that the M F a n d presu m -ably its source dealt with the problem of 'order ' . This explanationappears to furnish the link between the elder 's words about Markin HE 3.39.15 and Eusebius' source in 3.24 on the matter of theevangelists' 'order'. For the source used by Eusebius in 3.24 alsoexpands on the significance of the different beginnings of theGospels ,50No w they say that on account of these things, the apostle John was exhortedto hand down in the Gospel according to himself the time passed over insilence by the first evangelists and the things which had been done by theSaviour at this time (that is, things before the imp risonm ent of the Baptist),and that he signified this when saying 'this beginning of marvels didJesus '[John 2:11], and then by calling to mind the Baptist in the midst of theacts of Jesus as still then baptizing at Aenon near Salem, plainly indicatingthis when he says 'for John was not yet cast into prison' [John 3:24].

All this Eusebius summarizes from his source. This source, likethe MF, alluded toJohn 2:11 as furnishing anotice byJohn himselfabout the 'o rder ' or arrangement of his material . He re, in Eusebius 'source, it is explicit that this problem of 'order ' is being dealt withby a discussion of the beginnings of the Gospel and specificallywith the observation that John was asked to write about thingswhich took place earlier in the ministry of Jesus (hence the 'first'marvel at Cana). One more matter relating to the different begin-nings of the Gospels is preserved by Eusebius here, and that isJohn's omission of the Lord's genealogy recorded by Mat thew andLuke and his decision to begin (andp^aadai.) instead 'with thedescription of his divinity' (3.24.13). It is of course possible thatin Papias' full account the abbreviated disclaimer which now sur-vives about Mark's not writing in order (ov pevroi rdei) 'the thingssaid or done by the Lord ' may have had reference to more thanwhat we have uncovered here. But we are on safe ground, on thebasis of the MF, in concluding that the comparison of rageis hadto do at least with the inevitable discontinuities in arrangementthe winged aspect of the Gospel ; and on this account he made a compendious andcursory (ai avvropov KCLI Traparpi^ovaav) narrative, for such is the prophet icalcharacter ' (AH 3.11.8). Though Irenaeus relates Mark's style to the ' p rophet ic


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600 CHARLES E. HIL Lbrought about by, or exemplified in, the different ways the evangel-ists chose tocommence their treatments of 'the acts of Jesus ' . Andon the basis of the source used by Eusebius in 3.24.5-13 we cansay that this also involved the contention that John intentionallywrote to include a phase of Jesus' public ministry which antedatedthe substance of the accounts given in theother Gospels.51 T h a tEusebius' source in 3.24, byoffering this explanation, was indeeddealing with what was easily perceived as a disagreement betweenJohn and theother Gospels is probably indicated when Eusebiusinterjects, 'If this be understood thegospels no longer appear todisagree (Sdai 8iavelv aAA-r/AoisO' (3.24.13).

This understanding of the concern over rd^is as having to doparticularly with (or at least as being dealt with by) the differentbeginnings of the Gospels and with John's supplementation of theothers also offers a plausible explanation of I renaeus ' s ta tementabout the age of Jesus forwhich he claims support from the Asianelders. As we have seen above, all Irenaeus may have needed fromthe independent witness of ' the elders' was simply an affirmationthat Jesus' ministry actually began well before the 'one year' whichseemingly formed the basis of the synoptic accounts. And this mayeasily have been ascertained from the fragment which Eusebiusparap hrases in 3.24.713, which makes the po int th at Joh n recordedthe deeds of the Lord which took place between hisbaptism andthe Baptist 's imprisonment, in other words, deeds which were leftout of the other Gospels. What mayhave been in the 'e lders 'witness' was simply a defence of the order of events in John basedpartly on the claim that John had recorded events from the earlyministry of John which had been omitted by the other evangelists,thus confirming that the ministry of Jesus was in reality substan-tially longer than is recorded in Matthew, Mark , and Luke . It isfor this much that Irenaeus could claim thesuppor t of the elderscited from Papias. In this light it is interesting to observe thatIrenaeus says these Asian elders 'testify ... that John handed down(irapaSeScoK evai)'52 something which would imply the relativelyadvanced age of the Lord, while inEusebius' report, ' they say' thatJohn 'was asked to hand down (napaSovvai) in his Gospel the periodpassed over in silence by the former evangelists ..." (3.24.11), andhe goes on to conclude, 'thus John in the course of his Gospelhands down (napaSiScuaiv) what Christ didbefore the Baptist had


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE ) 601been thrown into prison . . ." (3.24.12). To put it another way, bothIrenaeus' Asian elders and Eusebius ' unnamed source are creditedwith saying that John 'handed down' something that would provethat Jesus' ministry lasted well beyond his thirtieth year.And there is more. Eusebius sums up the witness of his sourceby saying that John recorded what Jesus did before the 'one yearafter John the Baptist had been put in prison* which was relatedby ' the three evangelists ' (3.24.8). The mention of the 'one year 'in 'the three evangelists ' at the very least indicates a comparisonbetween the Synoptics and John which recognized a contrastbetween them on the length of Jesus ' ministry. Would this compar-ison have been made only by Eusebius, or was it already containedin his source? Eusebius knew of the controversy Irenaeus had dealtwith, for in the preceding chapter (H E 3.23.3), he had cited Irenaeusfrom this very passage, though without giving any notice of theissue Irenaeus was there addressing. But, interestingly, Irenaeus'discussion does not mark the beginning of the synoptic 'year' withthe Baptist's arrest, but with Jesus' baptism, as this was crucial tothe Valentinian view Irenaeus was hoping to confound (A H 2.22.1,5). Eusebius seems then to have got the measurement of the synop-tical year from his immediate source in 3.24, a source which is notprivy to the debate with the Valentinians. And, the relevance of asynoptical year in the context of his source would have been naturalin its effort to show that John recorded more of the 'first' thingsfrom the beginning of Jesus' ministry, before the arrest of theBaptist.53 It is thus very plausible that Irenaeus got his ammunitionagainst the Valentinians from an earlier source which had com-mented upon the different lengths of Jesus' ministry discernible inthe Gospels , pointing out that John's had supplemented the otherthree with a narrative of early years omitted by the others.The matter of the varying arrangements of events in John asopposed to the Synoptics must be seen then as strong evidence thatEu seb ius' source in 3.24.513 was Papias, who was in tu rn pro bab lypassing on an earlier witness. We may now also have a betterunderstanding of the nature of the elder 's comment on Mark's'order' in 3.39.15. One result is that any suspicion that the elder'scomments about Mark and Matthew in 3.39.15-16 were intended

53 Nor is i t improbable that Eusebius is in fact leading us to the very source


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602 CHARLES E. H I LLto disparage them, on this or some other basis54 has to be reconsid-ered. The source, as Eusebius summarizes it, explicitly says thatJohn 'welcomed them and testified to their t ruth ' ,5 5 finding faultonly in their omission of some important events at the beginningof Jesus ' ministry. That all the writers known to be dependentupon Papias also regard the last Gospel as only complementary tothe first three therefore appears as no surprise.(c ) The Evangelists as 'Publishers'. The fragment cited in 3.24uses the word eK&6ois for the 'publication' of the Gospels of Markand Luke. We noted that its author used it as the object of theverb -noielv in the middle voice. Not the noun, but the verb IKSI'SOJ/XIis used in the sense of 'publish ' by Irenaeus in AH 3.1.1, wherehe is recounting the various origins of the Gospels , in the veryplace where his knowledge of Papias ' notes on Matthew and Markis most evident. Heuses the term here specifically of John: 'ThenJohn , the disciple of the Lord, who had even rested on his breast,himself also gave forth (etjeScoKev) theGospel, while hewas livingat Ephesus in Asia'.56 One might think that the words e/cSdais ande/


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LU KE ) 603Aramaic original) chronologically first. But what was the relativechronological order of Mark and Luke? In describing the witnessof his source in 3.24, Eusebius mentions Mark first and Lukesecond. Irena eus also places Ma rk before Lu ke in his brief cataloguein AH 3.1.1, where he seems to be dependent upon Papias, thoughwhen he goes on to treat the testimonies of the gospel writers atlength in the succeeding chapters, he inverts their order. TheMuratorian Fragment, which also appears to be dependent uponPapias' discussions, definitely places Mark before Luke, numbersLuke as 'the third' and John as 'the fourth'. Origen too, clearlyplaces the four in the order Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in hisComm entary on Matthew (Eus. HE 6.25.46), where he also seemsto be dependent upon the testimony of Papias. But Eusebius tellsus that Clement in his Hypotyposeis alleged that the first twoGospels written were the ones with the genealogies, that is,Matthew and Luke, and it is in this passage where Clement tooseems dependent ultimately on the tradition first provided byPapias.58 We seem to have, then, Irenaeus, the MF, Origen, and

58 Denis Farkasfalvy, 'The Presbyters' Witness on the Order of the Gospels asReported by Clement of Alexandria' , CBQ 54 (1992), 26070, has recently arguedthat Clement's source, 'the elders', made no such ordering of the four Gospels at all,and that Clement did not quote them as such, but that the ordering was a misinter-pretation of E usebius, ma de in light of the controversies of Eu sebius' day. Farkasfalvythinks the original reference of 'the elders', who said 'the Gospels with genealogies tohave been written beforehand', was to the Marcionite version of Luke and/or theEbionite version of Matthew, both of which had cut out the accounts of the ancestry,birth and infancy of Jesus. The intent of the presbyters then would have been to giveguidance as to which versions of Matthew and Luke were the originals. But (a) thisrequires tha t the context of the original comm ent was faithfully reported by Clem entbut was completely misunderstood or distorted by Eusebius. Thoug h not impossible,this would be a rather blatant mistake regarding a statement in a book that was stillreadily accessible in Eusebius' day. (6) We do have in the summary of Clement adefinite indication that John , at least, was last in ord er It wou ld not be out of chara cterthen if other indications of chronology were present as well, (c) If the original intentionwas to distinguish true from false Gospels on the basis of their beginning or notbeginning with 'genealogies' (in Farkasfalvy's understanding, infancy narratives),there would still be a need to comment on Mark and John, neither of which havethem. Farkasfalvy recognizes this and ends by posing the question whether these twoGospels too must have come under suspicion for not including infancy narratives. Inwhich case, these two Gospels would after all become reasonable referents for thechronological comparison recorded by Clement from the 'elders'. (


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604 CHARLES E. HIL Lapparently Eusebius as well, against Clement, while each of theseseems to know the traditions passed on by Fapias. It is possiblethat Clement simply got this aspect of his tradition from anothersource besides Papias. Yet it is instructive to observe the basis forClement 's ordering. Eusebius writes, 'And again in the same booksClement has inserted a tradition of the primitive elders with regardto the order of the Gospels, as follows. He said that those Gospelswere first written which include the genealogies ...'. But why wouldthe genealogies59 be any kind of determining factor, unless this alsoinvolved the question of why the other Gospels did not give Jesus'genealogy, and the answer that, since the genealogy had alreadybeen given, twice, there was no need for the last Gospels to recordit? This, it turns out, is precisely one of the conclusions Eusebiuseither draws himself or reports was drawn by the source he hasutilized in 3.24.13, for the Gospel of John: 'and fittingly Johnpassed over the genealogy of our Saviour according to the flesh,because it had been already written out by Matthew and Luke, andbegan with the description of his divinity since this had beenreserved for him by the Divine Spiri t as for one greater than they'.It is entirely possible, then, that this point was made in the source(Papias), but only explicitly for the Fourth Gospel .60 Clement thenmay have applied the same logic to Mark's Gospel and determinedthat it too followed those Gospels which already recorded theLord's ancestry.61 At any rate, the coincidence between Clement

59 Whether taken strictly to mean the lists given by Matthew and Luke of Jesus'ancestors, or taken, as with Farkasfalvy, Presbyters' Witness, 266-67, t o mean'infancy narratives'.60 It is interesting to note that in a fragment on the origins of the Gospels atthe end of Ephraim's Commentary on the Diatessaron(see the versions quoted inLatin translation by Aland in hisSynopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (Stuttgart, 1976),p . 544), it is said of John, and of John alone, that he came 'and, having foundmuch announced by those who wrote the genealogies of the Son of Man, he wrotethat he was not just a man but "in the beginning was the Word" ' (Englishtranslation of Farkasfalvy, Presbyters' Witness, 266). If this source is dependentupon Eusebius' extract from Clement, or even upon Clement himself, it is curiouswhy Mark too is not included. It would appear that this witness goes back eitherto Eusebius' account in 3.24.13 or to the source on which Eusebius is dependenthere. They share the same indication that John wrote in awareness of the earlierGospels which contained the genealogies, and the same reference to John's com-mencement of his Gospel with a declaration of the divinity of Christ. This fragmentis very likely not from Ephraim and unfortunately its exact provenance is unknownSee Farkasfalvy's comments, Presbyters' Witness, 266-67, n- r4-


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 605and what is most probably to be attr ibuted to Eusebius ' source in3.24.13 with regard at least to John and the genealogy of Jesusforms one more link between this source and the later writers whoused Papias ' accounts of the Gospels.A Greek fragment of Origen's Homilies on Luke on Luke I: I62also shows important similarities with our fragment.63 Here herefers to 'a report noted down in writing that John collected thewritten Gospels in his own lifetime in the reign of Nero , andapproved of and recognized those of which the deceit of the devilhad not taken possession; but refused and rejected those which heperceived were not truthful ' . We know of no other written sourcefrom the period before Origen which mentions that John knew andapproved of the previous three Gospels, Origen and Eusebius 'source even sharing the word (nrohi^aaOai (HE3.24-7).64 Th o u g heach states it a bit differently, Eusebius' source and Origen alsoagree that John's evaluation of the previous canonical Gospelsinvolved a testimony to their truthfulness: Eusebius, 'he welcomedthem and testified to their truth'; Origen, 'but refused and rejectedthose which he perceived were not truthful'. Origen's source allegedthat John's ratification of the Gospels took place already in the timeof Nero. Eusebius, however, does not record this. But it is signific-ant that Eusebius' source said John 'used all the time an unwrittenp r e a c h i n g ' (rov ndvTa xpovov aypaw K xpr}^ivov K -qp&yp,ari) and t h a the only took to writing 'at last' (reXos). Eusebius ' source too thenassumed at least aconsiderable gap between the first three Gospelsand John. It is l ikely then that Origen's 'written report ' is eitherthe portion of Papias ' work from which Eusebius ' excerpt wastaken, or was based on it.65

(e) 'Inspiration'. Though Eusebius ' summary anddiscussion ofindependent accounts, fused by Clement, may be well explained if the two accountsare simply two parts of Papias' account of the four Gospels, one which dealt withJohn in relation to Matthew and Mark (6.14.5 which would correspond roughlyto what Eusebius records in 3.24.13), and one which dealt with Mark (6.14.6which would correspond to 3.39.15).

6 2 H. Crouzel, F. Fourier, P. Perichon, Origene, Homilies sur S. Luc Textelatin et fragmen ts grecs: introduction el notes SC 87 ( P a n s , 1 9 6 2 ) , p. 8i , p l a c e thehomehes on Luke in Caesarea in 23334.

6 3 Some doubts have been expressed about this fragment. H. Merkel says,Tauthenticite ne m'en parait pas tout a fait certaine' (H. Merkel, La pluralite desEvangiles comme probleme theologique et exegetique dans VEg lise anctenne, vers. franc,


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606 CHARL ES E. HIL Lhis source in 3.24 has to do with the human origins of the Gospelsand particularly with John, there is not lacking a reference to John'sbeing in some sense an agent of the Spirit. John began his Gospelwith the description of Christ's divinity 'since this had beenreserved for him by the Divine Spirit as for one greater than they'(3.24.13). This is not directly attributed to his source, however,and may be Eusebius' own expression. The account in 3.24.513mainly concerns John alone, but in introducing this section on thewritings of John, points out that Christ 's apostles did not presenthis teachings in persuasive or artistic language, 'but used only theproof of the Spirit of God which worked with them, and thewonder-working power of Christ which was consummated throughthem' (3.24.3). This too we can only safely attribute to Eusebius,not his source. Yet we find that some of those who likewise knewPapias' account on the Gospels also refer to John's inspiration, andsometimes include a broader statement concerning all the church'sGospels. Irenaeus says that the gospel has been given 'under fouraspects, but bound together by one Spirit ' (AH 3.11.8). In a similarway the Muratorian Fragment contains a general reference applyingto all four Gospels, that 'all things in all of them are declared(dedarata sint) by the one sovereign S pirit conc erning his nativity,concerning his passion, concerning his resurrection, concerning hiswalk with his disciples, and concerning his double advent' . Assummarized by Eusebius, Clement of Alexandria is also said tohave reported from ancient tradition that 'John, last of all, consciousthat the outward facts had been set forth in the Gospels, was urgedon by his disciples and divinely moved by the Spirit (nvev^ari6eoopT]devTa), composed a spiritual Gospel' (H E 6.14.7). This dnot deny a role for the Spirit in the origins of the other Gospels(C lem ent has jus t affirmed, for instance , tha t Pe ter had proc laimedthe Gospel 'by the Spirit ' (irvevfjiari) in Rome before Mark wroteit down (H E 6.14.6)). But Clement's tradition about John's specialendowment by the Spirit to compose his 'spiritual Gospel' , issimilar to what Eusebius says in 3.24.13 about John, whether thiswas his own conclusion, or whether it too was represented in someway in his source. It is very likely then, though not quite certain,that the source Eusebius used in 3.24.5-13 also made some mentionof John's endowment by the Spirit in writing his Gospel.


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 607of Papias ' account of the origin of the Gospel of J o h n . But it isincumbent upon us to askwhether Eusebius ' source could havebeen someone other than Papias .Sanday ment ions the possibility of Hippoly tus , who wroteagainst Gaius and those whom Epiphanius styles the 'Alogoi'66 (ifthey are separate from Gaius, which is very doubtful) , though headmits that this is 'only aguess ' .6 7 T h e r e is at least one significantparallel with Epiphanius ' report about the Alogoi, which is gener-ally believed to have been based on thework of Hippoly tus . Asdoes the report cited by Eusebius , Epiphanius notes that thesynoptic gospels give 'an accurate account of the time after John'simpr i sonment ' (Panar. 51.21.18) while John relates several eventswhich took place before it (John 3.24; Panar. 51.21.24). Yetthis observation would already be known to Epiphanius fromEuseb ius ' historia ecclesiastica 3.24.513, and would even havebeen available in Hippoly tus ' day from Papias ' work, if we arecorrect . And besides the fact that there is noother evidence thatEusebius had seen Hippolytus ' t reat ise inwhich he refutes Gaius{HE 6 .20 .2 -3 ; 22.1 ),68 other features in the Epiphanian accountdealing with the Alogoi portray a debate of somewhat differentterms and character. The Alogian charges, that John has omittedthe bir th, the flight into Egypt and the return to Nazareth , andthat he gives a different chronology after the baptism of Jesus ,not mentioning the forty days' temptation or the return to Galilee,are not addressed by the simpler explanation in Eusebius ' source,which says that John's Gospel 'relates what Christ did before theBaptist had been thrown into prison, but the other three evangel-ists narrate the events after the impr i sonment of the Baptis t '(3.24.12). Nor does Eusebius ' source show any signs of a contro-versy about whowrote the Four th Gospel , or a concern withCer in thus or any other heretics, both of which lay at the basis ofthe charges of Gaius and the Alogi. The fragment used byEusebius addresses thekind of questionconsis tency with otherwell-used Gospelswhich might have accompanied from theoutset any Gospel published as late as c. AD 90100.

Sanday suggests asmore likely that Eusebius ' source in 3.24 is6 6 Epiphanius, Panar. 51.4.5-12; 17.11-18.1, etc.6 7 W. S a n d a y , The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel ( O x f o r d , 1 9 0 5 ) , p. 69, 'I t


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608 CHARLES E. H I LLClement of Alexandria, based on some similarities betweenClement ' s s ta tement quoted by Eusebius (HE 6.14.7) and thefragment.69 But there is a problem here in that Eusebius explicitlyquotes Clement 's t radit ion on the origin of the Four th Gospel in6.14.7, and, though there are important points of similarity, it isunques t ionably a different account from the one he cites in 3.24.If the fragment in 3.24 is also from Clement we should expectpar t of it to be reproduced in 6.14.7, where Eusebius has as hiss tated purpose to give Clement ' s t radi t ion about John. Thoughthere are enough points of contact to suggest a l i terary relation-ship, Clement ' s account in the Hypotyposeis lacks several import-ant aspects of Eusebius ' source . It has nothing about Johnapproving of the previous Gospels (3.24.7); nothing about hisremarking on their omission of acts of Chris t 'at first and at thebeginning of the preaching' (3.24.7); nothing about the reques tfor John to write having to do with filling this gap (3.24.11);nothing about John's indicating this by calling the Cana sign 'thebeginning of miracles ' in John 2:11 and by mentioning theBaptis t 's continuing minis try before his impr i sonment in John3:24 (3.24.11). The similarities are ins tead much more consis tentwith the view that Clement, who knew Papias ' account, was con-densing and selectively summarizing what he knew of J o h n ' sorigins, based largely on the account we now have in Euseb ius ,HE 3.24. After all, Eusebius explicitly states that Clement'sinformation here is something he related as 'a t radit ion of theprimitive elders ' (6.14.5) a s Sanday perceptively says, 'probably,if not altogether identical with the group drawn upon by Papias ,yet at least in part identical with it ' .7 0

Could Origen be a possibility? Origen's account of the discrep-ancies between John and the Synoptics , at least in his CommentaryonJohn, book 10, certainly has little in common with the h a r m o n -izing approach of Eusebius ' source in 3 .24 .5 -13 . But some of hisother comments on the Gospels show that he probably had comeinto contact with a copy of Papias ' books at some point . It is infact most probable that the copy Eusebius used was housed in the

69 He lists the following similarities (Criticism, 69-70), '1 . The Gospel is thework of St John the Apostlefor there is no doubt that he is intended. 2. It waswritten towards the end of his life, after the publication of the other three. 3. Thethree Gospels were in the hands of the Apostle, and he had read and up to a


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 609great l ibrary at Caesarea which Origen had founded with hispersonal holdings. A fragment from O rigen 's Commentary onMatthew, written sometime after 244, preserved by Eusebius (H E6.25) relates what Origen says he had learned 'by tradition' . Thisaccount not only agrees with Papias in the common belief in aHebrew original of Matthew, but follows its mention of Markwriting his Gospel 'according to the instruction of Peter ' , with asupporting reference to Peter 's acknowledgement of Mark in hisGeneral Epistle (1 Pet. 5:13), just as we know Papias had doneearlier (H E 2.15.2). Learning 'by tradition' could easily be a wayof referring to an account of Papias, who is quoting another earlierwitness who is either unnamed or is of no particular personalreputation. But unfortunately, all Origen has to say about John'sGospel in this passage is that it was written 'after them all ' . Origenelsewhere shows his acceptance of the tradition that John migratedfrom Palestine to Asia and ministered there until his death atEphesus, though he might have got this from Irenaeus or Clement,or by now from common tradition.71 Yet, as we have pointed outabove, there is one other excursus on the origin of John found ina fragment of his Homilies on Luke on Luke 1:1 which showsimportant similarit ies to the source cited by Eusebius in 3.24.Here he refers to 'a report noted down in writing that Johncollected the written Gospels in his own lifetime in the reign ofN e r o , and approved of and recognized those of which the deceitof the devil had not taken possession; but refused and rejectedthose which he perceived were not truthful ' . We noted above thatthe report referred to shares with Eusebius' source the informationthat John knew and approved (aTroSetjaodai) of the previous threeGospels and bore some kind of testimony to their truthfulness. I tis clear in any case that Eusebius' report in 3.24 could not havebeen taken merely from this fragment from Origen. First , wecannot be sure Eusebius was aware that Origen had said this, forwhen it came time to give Origen's views on the origins of thefour Gospels, including John, in HE 6.25 he does not use it.Second, Eusebius' extract in 3.24.5-13 has information aboutMatthew in particular that is absent from the account of Origenin his homily on Luke 1:1. This means that Eusebius' sourcecould be the same as Origen's, but he will have got it from thecommon source itself, not from Origen. Third, the source usedby Eusebius obviously contained much more even about the


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610 CHARLES E. HIL Lmay have omitted). In short, there is no known passage or collec-tion of passages in the writings of Origen from which Eusebiuscould have built up the report he cites in 3.24.513.But is it possible that what we have in this section is, let us say,simply Eusebius ' own creative amalgamation of several earliersources? Only as a last resort should such a theory be proposed,fo r a) he at tr ibutes the information on Matthew and John to thesame source, and b) ther e is a clear unity of tho ug ht and voca bularywhich character izes the whole account on Matthew and John, aunity which just happens to resemble Papias ' account of Mark in2.15.2 and 3.39.15.

And if his source was a unified account but written by someoneafter the age of Papias, it seems that its author must have knownClement ' s Hypotyposeis, the Muratorian Fragment, Origen 'sComm entary on Matthew and his Homilies on Luke, and probablyIrenaeus ' Against Heresies (or else possibly Hippolytus ' Headsagainst Gains). From Clement ' s Hypotyposeis, he must have gotthe idea that John did not record Jesus ' genealogy because it hadalready been set out by Matthe w and M ark, and the un ders tand ingof John's Gospel as partaking of a special commission from theSp irit to exceed the o ther ev angelists in insight into Jes us ' divinity.From this work, or else from the M F, he must have got somestory of John being requested or compelled by others to write hisGospel, though he will have invented as the context for that urgingthat it had to do with the desire to supplement the earlier Gospelswith deeds done by Jesus before John's imprisonment. Thismotive will have been taken, presumably, from Irenaeus' refuta-tion of Ptolemy, where the bishop (citing the testimony of Asianelders!) stresses that Jesus ' ministry in John is recorded as beingat least three years long, instead of the one year which could bemistakenly read out of the previous Gospels. But, in contrast toIrenaeus, our author will have begun the synoptical 'year ' notfrom the baptism of Jesus but from the imprisonment of John.Also from the M F he must have taken the term Trapd8ooi for thewondrous works of Jesus and have unconsciously substi tuted thisword for the word o-qpela when he ci ted John 2:11. From Origen'sComm entary on Matthew he must have got the information thatMatthew's Aramaic Gospel was writ ten expressly for ' those whofrom Judaism came to believe' , though he will have invented acontext for this as well, that it was at the point of Matthew's


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUK E) 611previous three Gospels. And in all this our mystery author willhave chanced to express himself in a style which has severalseemingly innocent links, both in vocabulary and in apologeticconcern, with the words of the 'elder ' on Matthew and Mark ascollected by Papias and recorded by Eusebius in 2.15.1-2 and3.39.15-16, though he must have done this before Eusebius hadconveniently catalogued these excerpts. In my opinion this strainscredibili ty well past the breaking-point. If on the other hand thisfragment is, as Eusebius' form of citation indicates, a single,unified document, and if it is in fact from Papias, it explains in avery economical fashion many of the statements of those we knowwere familiar with his account of the other Gospels. It is suggestedhere then not merely that Eusebius' account in HE 3.24.5-13 isadapted from Papias but that it is scarcely possible to conceive ofit as coming from anyone else.5. Eusebius and His Papian Material.

Thus we also now have an explanation for how Eusebius, whenrelating Papias' tradition about Mark and Matthew in 3.39.15-16,could have omitted his tradition about John. That is, he hadalready given it in 3.24.5-13, though without cit ing Papias' name.It is important to keep in mind that in 3.39.1516 Eusebius is notsetting out to give a systematic report either of the origins of allfour Gospels,72 or of all that Papias said on that subject. His largerintent is here to report on a t ime during the reign of Trajan whenthere still survived some, particularly in Asia, who were in thefirst rank of the apostolic succession (3.36.1; 37 .1, 4; 38 .1; 39.1).These included Clement of Rome, Ignatius, and Polycarp. In thisperiod he also puts Papias, though he has to make clear to hisreaders that, despite a misstatement by Irenaeus, Papias was him-self not an actual hearer of the Apostles, but gathered his traditionsfrom those who had been hearers of the Apostles, or from theirfollowers (3.39.2-8). At the end of his report on Papias he pauses,almost incidentally, to append (irpoa^TJao^ev) an interesting andim po rtan t story from Papias about M ark, and gives a portion of72 Sellew says, 'Eusebius' comments on the gospels in the History appear to behaphazardly arranged and in fact are poorly coordinated with each other'; 'AsEusebius recounts what he knows or believes has happened during the reigns ofsucceeding emperors, as correlated, when possible, with the successions of


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612 CHARLES E HIL Lhis test imony on Matthew. Unfortunately forus, he felt no neces-sity to be complete here even on what he records of these twoGospels , let alone on what Papias might have said about theothers. We know this because in 2.15.2 hehad recorded a par t ofPapias' testimony about Mark which does not show up in3-39-I5-N or was it Eusebius ' purpose ear l ier in 3.24.513, where hesummarizes Papias ' witness without naming Papias, to establishthe Fourth Gospel by the test imony of all theancients by name .I t must be remembered tha t in Eusebius ' mind there was nocontroversy over John's Gospel, as he says in3.24.1, and thereforeno pressing need to name the ' ancients ' who witnessed to it, ashe says hewill have to do later for the disputed second and thirdLet te rs of John and the Apocalypse (3.24.18). In the course ofrelating the history of the early reign of Trajan in3.24 he naturallymentions the Apost le John who, according to Irenaeus, l ived untilthat t ime. Eusebius therefore pauses at that point to remark onlyon the 'undoubted wri t ings of this apostle' (3.24.1), that is, on hisGospel and First Epistle ( though our extract concerns only theGospel) , leaving 2 and 3 John and the Apocalypse ti l l the propertime (3.24.18). That Eusebius leaves out thename of his sourcehere is no great problem. As Lawlor has said, usually whenEusebius uses an unnamed wri t ten source indicated by ( / ca r^e iXoyos, ' the document onwhich he relies is either indicated in theimmediate context , or may bediscovered by a search through thepassages from previous writers scattered over his pages' .7 3 A nd soit is here. For at the end of his remarks on the Four th Gospel ,Euseb ius reminds his readers parenthetically that he had alreadygiven them the cause for the Gospel according to Mark .7 4 T h i srefers to his statements in 2.15, where he had explicitly namedhis sources as being Clement of Alexandria and Papias. Wem aydefer to Bartlet at this point.7 5That he should here have used Papias's evidence on thepoint withoutnaming him is exactly what we should expect, not only from his disinclina-tion to cite one of whose judgment incertain respects he had a slightingopinion, but also from the actual analogy of his previous account (ii, 15)of the historical origin ofMark's Gospel. This he states in a form whichhe attributes explicitly to Clement of Alexandria, adding, 'And the bishopof Hierapolis, byname Papias, joins him in additional testimony.' And

7 3 Lawlor, Eusebiana, p. 22.


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 613there he would have been glad to leave Papias's witness on the point, hadit not been for the fact that it bore on another matter which had exercisedthe Church's mind not a little; to wit, the differences in order and contentsbetween itsGospels. So hehas to return toPapias onMark (in iii. 39)in connection with that problem ...

I I I . I M P O R T OFT H E ' N E W ' PAPIAN F R A G M E N TWe must now consider some of the implications of the restora-tion of Papias ' witness about the Fourth Gospel .

1 . The Role of John the ElderStrong similarit ies in form and in vocabulary between thisaccount and that which is at tr ibuted to ' the Elder ' in 3.39.15-16make it probable that Papias' own source for the information onMat thew and John in 3.24 is the same 'elder ' , with li t t le doubtthe notorious John the Elder. It might be argued that Papias hasso taken over thewitness of the elder in 3.39.15 as to express itin his own idiom, so that the lexical connections between this andPapias ' accounts of the other Gospels go back no further thanPapias himself. But in any event, 3.39.15 is a tradition at tr ibuted

to the elder, and even the conceptual similarities with the newm aterial w ould m ake it very likely, even apart from the philologicalcorrespondences, that the same source lies behind the reportadopted byEusebius in 3.24.513.75If Papias' source is indeed John the Elder, this then wouldsupply theultimate proof that this man hadnothing to do withthe authorship of the Fourth Gospel ,77 for he descr ibes John,obviously, as a person distinct from himself. At last , however, wemay be able to ascribe to the legacy of the Elder John some value

in helping toanswer the Johannine Quest ion.2. Johannine Authorship

Consequently, this will further confirm that the John who is thesubject of this fragment's witness could only be the apostle. The7 6 The apostles not taking it upon themselves to write but acceding to requests;

the attempt to bolster or 'ratify' the gospels, at least Mark and John, by appeal toportions of the apostle's writing which were supposed to 'confirm' the story toldof its origin; relating the written form to oral preaching or teaching of one of theapostles; and characterizing the written gospels as uirofurq^ara, are similarities3.24.513 shares with precisely this citation from the elder in 3.39.15.


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614 CHARLES E. HIL Lfragment presents John as a personal disciple of Jesus, pairing himwith Matthew as the only two 'disciples of the Lord'7 8 who left anaccount of their vno^v-qfiara, and assuming that this man would beuniquely qualified to pronounce on whether the previous Gospelswere 'true* and complete. Crediting his source, Eusebius says: 'theysay accordingly that for this reason the apostle John was asked tohand down in the Gospel according to him .. ." (3.24.11). There isthus good reason to believe that the word 'apostle' was used in thesource, but even if this cannot be assured, there remains no doubtthat it was the son of Zebedee who was intended.

It has long been apparent to many scholars that Papias musthave said something about John's Gospel . From comparing thetestimonies of those who were dependent upon Papias we wouldbe led to conjecture, as Bauckham has, that Papias might havesaid something about John being urged by others to write hisGospel. This we have confirmed from our fragment. By such acomparison we might also conjecture, again with Bauckham, thatPapias must have said something about the order or arrangementof the events recorded in the Fourth Gospel relative to the otherthree. This too has been confirmed. By the very same method wewould almost certainly also have to conjecture that Papias attrib-uted the Fou rth Gospel to John the Ap ostle for so, apparently,did all those who read him.79 The restoration to Papias of thewritten work used by Eusebius in 3.24.5-13 simply confirms whatwe might otherwise have conjectured.3. 'Gospels'

It becomes probable, though not quite certain, that Papias 'account also used the term 'Gospel ' for the written documents heknew under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This

Taiv TOV K upiov fiadrjrwv. A v a r i a n t h a s Siarpi^uiv for ^a(?ijTaji>, but the Latintranslation has ex discipuhs and the Syriac 'Apostles ' . See Theron, 47; H. J . Lawlorand J. E. L. Oulton, Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea. T he E cclesiastical History andthe Ma rtyrs of Palestine, 2 vols. (London, 1954), vol. 2, 93. 'Disciple of the Lord'is the favourite Asian designation of John used so often by Irenaeus. It is plain,because of the pairing with Matthew, that this t i t le does not exclude him from thetwelve. It is also to be noted that in Papias' Introduction (H E 3.39.4) he had usedthe t i t le 'disciples of the Lord' to refer to Andrew, Peter, Phil ip, Thomas, James,John , and Mat thew.79 At least this has been the usual conclusion of most scholars. But I say


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 615has relevance for recent discussions about the origin of the use ofthe term 'G osp el ' as a nam e for a written d ocu m ent. Som e scholarshave been unable to acknowledge such a use before Marcion 8 0 andH. Koester even proposes that this use was originated by Marcion.Hengel , on the other hand, says that the notion of Justin (writingin about 150) and the Church soquickly taking over a new titlefor these works from the heretic is 'absurd'. 8 1 Hengel cites 2Clem.8.5; Did. 8.2; 11.3; 15.3 f; Aristides, Apol. 2, as earlier examples,supporting the practice of Just in inDial. 10.2; 100.1, Apol. 66.3 .G . N. Stanton also points to Ignat ius, Smyrn. 5.1; 7.2,82 to which,I believe, could be added Philad. 8.2.

Where multiple works of a 'gospel' type, in Papias' case four ofthem, were known, some method or methods ofdistinguishing themmust have been in use. Though Papias must have referred toMatthew and John as these disciples' 'recollections' (tmoixvr)ij,a.Ta)(3.24.5), three times in Eusebius' summaries we also read the phrase'the Gospel according to him/them' for Matthew (3.24.6), Mark andLu ke (3.24.7) and Jo hn (3.24.11).83 It is possible tha t this is Eu se biu s'terminology, but the consistent and repeated use could suggest thatthe expression goes back to his source. This form, 'Gospel accordingto ...', also matches the titles found in our earliest gospel papyribeginning from before AD 200,84 and is attested in church writersbeginning with Irenaeus and the MF. Twice in his account Eusebiusalso uses the term 'evangelist' for the gospel authors (3.24.8, 11), thesecond in a seemingly direct reference to his source: 'They sayaccordingly that for this reason the Apostle John was asked tohanddown in the Gospel according to him the period passed over in80 H. Koester, 'From the Kerygma-Gospel to Written Gospels', NTS 35 (1989),

36181; idem. Ancient Christian Gospels. Their History and Development(Philadelphia/London, 1990), pp. 143; R. Gundry, 'EYAFFEAION: How soonaBook?', JBL 115 (1996), 321-25.81 Hengel, Frage, p. 63.82 G. N. Stanton, 'The Fourfold Gospel', NTS 43 (1997) 317-46 at 334. Seehis fuller discussion in, 'Matthew: BIBAOl, EYAFFEAION, or BIOZV, in F. vanSegbroeck, et al. (eds.), The Four Gospels 1992, FS Frans Neirynck (Leuven,1992), pp. 1187-1202.

TO KaT* aVTOV evayyiXiov (6); Ttuv Kar1 (LVTOVS evayyeXtwv (7)j T


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616 CHARLES E. H IL Lsilence by the former evangelists '. That Papias' account used theterm cvayyeXiov for the written Gospels or referred to any of theirauthors as evayyeXiarai, is then highly pro bable , and will receive somesupport from the following point.4. A Four-Gospel Canon

John is presented in Eusebius' source as the last of four to writea gospel. All those authors dependent upon Papias' account haveJohn last of only four, even agreeing on their order (with the excep-tion of Clement, as noted above). Despite the existence of othergospels, and despite an obvious familiarity with some of them in thecase of most of these auth ors , all these read ers of Pa pia s85Irenaeus,Clement, the Muratorian Fragment, Origen, Victorinus, andEusebiustestify that only the four were considered to have soundapostolic credentials and were deemed as in a special class by theChurch and its leaders. Indeed, our fragment of Papias claims Johnas giving apostolic sanction to the first three (if Origen's 'writtensource' is Papias himself, this was said to be already in the time ofNero) . This seems to require that Papias (and probably his source)considered as in the same class only these four Gospels.

Another point relevant to this observation needs to be madeabout Papias ' original account in the Exposition of the DominicalOracles. Though the circumstances related in the stories of eachGospel are quite different, their presentations in Papias' workshare, as we have seen, several common elements and concerns.This must signify that attempts were being made already at thattime to offer a rationale for the number and identities of theGospels acknowledged by the Church. We find,1. a concern, whether apologetic or simply didactic, to maintainthat the evangelists did not take it upon themselves to initiatethe writing but were responding to the requests of their hearers(Matthew, Mark, John; with Luke a 'cause' is found in thedesire to correct the doubtful propositions of others);8 6

85 Surely Papias too knew of other Gospels, or other writ ten accounts whichpurported to give other sayings and deeds of the Lord and 'commandments ofothers ' (3.39.3). Eusebius says Papias recorded the story about the woman takenin adultery, which he says is contained in the Gospel to the Hebrews, though hedoes not quite say that Papias cited the story from that work. Eusebius says thisgospel was used by the Ebionites


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WHAT PAPIAS SAID ABOUT JOHN (AND LUKE) 6172. references to each being essentially a written record of whatwas preached or taught by one (or in Luke's case, more thanone) of the Apostles;3. theuse of the term 'recollections ' (of events in the Lord's lifeby Mat thew and John, of the preaching of Peter by Mark) ;4. a chronological ordering of the four, with an evident accom-panying interest inexplaining the reasons for a new Gospel byJohn som uc h later tha n the oth ers (the justification bein g tha tthe others had left out the beginnings of Jesus ' minis try andthat it was reserved for John to relate more vividly and plainlythe divinity of the Lord) ;5. the a t temp t to find some kind of endorsement for each Gospel ,or gospel writer, from another accepted (apostolic), and textualauthori ty: of Mark by Peter (HE 2.15.2); of Luke 8 7 by Paul(H E 3.4.7); of John by John (in his indications of chronologyand probably in testimony cited from 1 John)8 8 and possiblyby Andrew and others , according to theMF\ for Mat thew asof yet we cannot point to a textual affirmation that has survived,though his Gospel is vouched for by John in the story toldabout John's Gospel inHE 3.24.7.These almost formalized qualities in Papias ' presentation implyalready a fairly high degree of reflection, forethought, and nodoubt even some research. They tell us that the subject of theChurch's Gospels , their authori t ies and how they came tobe, wasa topic of interest in early second-century Asia.They also tell us, of course, that a special recognition, probablyimplying a collection, of these four Gospels as set apart from allothers should b

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