Papias and Earliest Gospel Traditions | Dr. Richard C. Miller

Dr. Miller, author of Resurrection and Reception in Early Christianity between classical antiquity and the social origins of earliest Christianity. His published work focuses on the mythological roots of the New Testament Gospel portraitures of Jesus, the sacralized founding emblem of the Christian religion.
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When we read Papias (preserved in fragmentary form in Eusebius, EH 3.39), we find a messy description of earliest cultic "gospel" traditions. Circa 100 C.E., he composed a (since lost) five-book work titled Guide to the Master’s Sayings. Assuming his achieved prominence within nascent Christian communities even to undertake such a project and have it survive and quoted for centuries, we may surmise that Papias’s proximal acquaintance with these early story-telling communities began quite a bit prior to his published work, that is, in the late first century.
He claims oral tradition as his preferred source for the work, namely, from his primary informant, the famed John the Elder (likely author of the Apocalypse of the New Testament), who was at that time an aged man but not himself a recognized eyewitness to the historical Jesus. Papias thus had none of the originary apostles as his source for the work. Papias complains about many poor, verbose, or otherwise spurious sources, many of which apparently circulating in written form indeed that early. So, Papias claims to be passing along third-hand stories by traditional succession:
Jesus → Disciples → Elders → Papias → Guide to the Master’s Sayings
Jesus → Peter → Mark → canonical Mark → Papias → Guide to the Master’s Sayings
(sources) → Aristion → (written gospel narratives) → Guide to the Master’s Sayings
Jesus → Matthew → Logia (Aramaic) → (bad Greek translation) → Guide to the Master’s Sayings
Papias knew of several poor Greek translation attempts related to Matthew’s Aramaic Logia. We may assume that he chose what he considered to be the best of those to which he had physical access to be one of his sources for the Guide. He appeared to signify Mark for its apostolic / cultic authority-line through Peter, and he valued Matthew’s Logia for its presumed preferable story sequencing. Given that we now observe clear source dependency in canonical Matthew with prior Mark, we may deduce that canonical Matthew was a later Greek composite of a poor(er) translation of the Logia and Mark, though likely more or less true to the sequence given in the Logia, and, as such, titled "Gospel according to Matthew" (as bearing that Matthean legacy). Of the canonical Gospels, therefore, Papias at 100 C.E. knew only of Mark. Such findings push the terminus a quo of canonical Matthew out to 100 C.E. or even later, given that by the time of Papias, it had either not existed or not had become recognized as such. Indeed, I am not the first to note that this bare observation pushes the composition dates for John and Luke out past 110 as well. Beyond Mark's legend-laden work, Papias knew of diverse oral stories, Aristion’s narratives, and several poor Greek translations of Matthew’s Logia. I would not tend to see Matthew’s Aramaic Logia as merely “conjectural”; Papias could not likely have gotten away with the comment that “several (‘each’ seems to imply more than two) translated it to the best of their ability,” had such a document never existed behind those (perceived "botched," and thus highly divergent) translation attempts known to Papias and the broader communities.

[@Achill101]

It's good to have Papias' sayings. The problem with them is that we don't know enough about how the Matthew and Mark he spoke about are related to our canonical gospels according to Matthew and to Mark.

[@theophilos0910]

Unfortunately we have no contemporary first hand writings of bishop Papias of Smyrna (c.95-100 CE) - his writings only exist in much later quotations from the 4th century c. 325 CE by Eusebeius in his ‘Ecclesiastical History’ which tho’ extensive, is a highly selective much much later work that seeks to make ‘Iranaean Pauline Orthodoxy’ the norm … if we could recover earlier copies of Bishop Papias from say, the 2nd century it would clear up a great deal of confusion…
Matathiah (‘Matthew’) mentioned in the quote from Papias May well not have follow’d Jesus as one of the twelve but may be the same ‘son of Halfa-Kleopha’ [aka Alphaeus] who replac’d Yehudah bar Shimeon Ish Keryiota (=Judas Iscariot) after the crucifixion chosen by lots (see Acts chapter 1) and if so it would have been natural for him to learn the teaching of Jesus ‘to collect the LOGIA of the Lord in the Hebrew tongue & ev’ryone had then to translate each one as best he could’ …
But what exactly are LOGIA (‘oracles’) ? Does it mean ‘the words of Jesus’ which would have been a different Greek word: LOGOI ?
Or does ‘Logia of the Lord’ actually refer to ‘those prophetic oracles in the Hebrew Scriptures that were said to have foretold of the Messiah’ ? This at least would then explain the recurring mantra ‘this was done to fulfill what was spoken of by the prophet so-and-so’ …
The ‘gospel of Matthew’ quotes the Greek LXX Old Testament (250-150 BCE) in 60% of his ‘OT Citations’ (many of his ‘fulfillment citations are at odds with the Hebrew masoretic text used by Protestants & Jews to-day from 960 CE in Leningrad) but roughly 40% of them seem to quote from a version of the Aramaic Targums and are often allign’d with the Dead Sea Scroll versions (Origen had 5 or 6 Greek translations in his Hexapla which seem to translate various Hebrew & Aramaic recensions of Torah, Proohets & Psalms) and these ‘Matthean OT citations’ are not always allign’d word-for-word with OT citations/quotations from the majority Greek LXX readings -
So…long story short -this conundrum of Papias (how reliable is Eusebius & how do we know ?) is actually a lot more complex than it appears at first blush …

[@craigfairweather3401]

My theories about the Papias comments and the gospels are threefold: 1) Papias is referring to our current ‘Mark’ when he speaks of ARISTION’ s ‘narrative’ on the logia of Jesus. Referring to a true narrative that was made to frame a selection of stories that have themes of missionary activity, opposition by Jewish authorities and Romans, miracles countering evil spirits and suffering martyrdom. Tradition links Aristion to being an ‘elder’ in Smyrna. Revelation and Acts both highlight these concerns around believers experiences in the Province of Asia. Papias seems to say that in his own early years the Elder Aristion and the Elder John (NOT John the apostle) were both alive, and not too far from his own Hierapolis that travellers occasionally relayed accounts of what they had been saying about their own memories of the apostles. talking about the apostles from personal memory and were themselves surviving personal followers of Jesus. This personal prominence and potential authority of authorship, would explain why our so-called ‘Mark’ would be incorporated in our ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’. The fact that Aristion was not an apostle might have given the authors more confidence about changing the order and wording of what they used in our ‘Mark’.
2) Papias is referring to our ‘John’ when he speaks of (John) Mark writing things from Peter’s perspective and not in (chronological) order. As the order of events and narrative of most events were strikingly not the same as the narrative in our ‘Mark’. Note the remarkable prominence in our ‘John’ of both Peter and his sidekick ‘the disciple who Jesus love’ the person supposedly the eyewitness ‘who wrote these things’. I identify this supposed originator and eyewitness with John Mark, called simply John twice in Acts ‘also called Mark’ in Acts and other NT texts, and called John the Elder by Papias at another point. Early on in the battle against the gnostics John Mark and John son of Zebedee were confused in the traditions and polemics. .
3) Papias’s ‘Matthew’ is the Sayings source that our ‘Matthew’ has later incorporated into his revision of our ‘Mark’.