Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 6:23 amI am saying that ''elders'' is an obvious and common thing to call them if Papias wanted
to give them a some kind of authority. If Papias was ''innocent'' and less ideological in the his words, then he would have used another term. For example, Eusebius doesn't show about Papias the same high respect that Papias shows about these presumed ''elders'': really, Eusebius wrote that Papias was a fool. Eusebius didn't call Papias as ''the elder'', so here is a valid counter-example that confutes your (Ben's) view of ''elders'' as an
innocent term (''innocent'' = without ideological double ends).
Hold on there. I never said that the term "elders" was not used as a term of respect, one that implies authority. Of
course it is. But
this is the claim of yours that I was responding to:
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 12:09 pm
The "elder" is only an artificial device invented by Papias
for the same reason why Irenaeus had to invent a Jesus being 50 years old: the chain of "tradition" had to be secured in some way, right?
So stop shifting the goal posts.
My point is that the term "elder" itself is hardly evidence of your claim. We would expect that term
both if the tradition were valid
and if it were not. My argument here is not even
necessarily that the tradition is valid. Rather, it is that your reasons for
thinking it invalid do not work.
To return to your claim, for Irenaeus to say that Jesus died at 50 is to put
less distance in between Jesus and Irenaeus. For Papias to call the disciples "elders," on the other hand, puts
more distance in between Jesus and Papias. Your comparison above between Papias and Irenaeus
does not work. Irenaeus is improving the tradition by bringing Jesus closer to its later tradents. Papias is merely claiming that the tradition existed; he is not improving it.
But the disciples are already contemporary with Jesus, by definition, so to call them "elders" cannot serve your preferred purpose.
Isn't Papias meaning something as: apostles
> elders > Papias. I have thought so.
That is how Irenaeus uses the term. But this is what Papias says:
And if anyone chanced to come along who had followed the elders, I inquired as to the words of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter, or what Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or Matthew... said....
Papias is asking about the words of the elders. Papias is asking about the what Andrew and Peter and the rest said. "The elders" = Andrew and Peter and so on. As I mentioned, the easiest way this works in the Greek is for "words of the elders" to be in apposition to (and therefore equivalent to) "what Andrew" and the rest "said." The disciples, then, are the elders. That another John is also called "the elder" simply means that this is his title, exactly as implied in 2 and 3 John.
Note that Papias is not claiming contact with the elders (but rather with those "who had followed" the elders), and he is not claiming contact with the disciples, either. That is because they are the same group.